Sculpture project of the Little Prince in New York, Villa Albertine – by Le Souvenir français, with the support of the Saint Exupéry Foundation for Youth

The sculpture will be installed outside, at the entrance to the Villa Albertine, 5th Avenue, in agreement with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York. Press conference on October 13 at the Villa Albertine: October 13, the French Cultural Services will host two consecutive events that are closely linked :

• The French Governement, represented by Mr. Gaëtan Bruel, Cultural Counsellor of the French Embassy and Director of Villa Albertine, will bestow on Stacy Schiff, the celebrated author and Pulitzer Prize Winner, the insigna of Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, in recognition of her having brilliantly documented three centuries of Franco-American rivalry, friendship, and cooperation in her works on Saint-Exupéry, on Vera and Vladimir Nabokov, and on Benjamin Franklin.
• Immediately following the prestigious award ceremony, the projected sculpture of Le Petit Prince will be officially presented by sculptor Jean-Marc de Pas, in the presence of M. Olivier d’Agay, president of the The Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Youth Foundation, and M. Nicolas Delsalle-Mun, General Delegate of the Foundation.

Generations of children — and with them generations of adults — have fallen under the spell of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince since its 1943 publication. Translated into more than 500 languages and dialects, the book is second only to the Bible in its foreign editions. Less well known than Saint-Exupery’s whimsical traveler is the fact that he conjured him into existence in New York City and in Northport, Long Island. While dozens of plaques and statues around the world commemorate the novelist, there is no such monument in Manhattan, a city Saint-Exupery left weeks before publication. He sailed to north Africa with one advance copy of the fable/story in his bag; fifteen months later, he disappeared at the controls of a Lockheed P-38 Lightning, in the course of a reconnaissance mission for the US Air Force. Fittingly, the sculpture of The Little Prince will be installed near the front entrance of Villa Albertine. This project has received the official support of H.E. Denise Campbell Bauer, Ambassador of the United States in Paris, and H.E. Philippe Etienne, Ambassador of France in Washington. Its Comité d’Honneur is co-presided by Stacy Schiff and Olivier d’Agay, great-nephew Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.