A Landmark Wedding for Columbus, Miss Liberty

In the category of social notes from all over, mark your calendars for an event that even former New York Parks Commissioner Tom Hoving, creator of some of the wildest ‘60s “Happenings” in Central Park, could not have thought up:

The Statue of Liberty of New York and the statue of Christopher Columbus of Barcelona are going to get married. They’ve set the date, early 1992, to coincide with the 500th anniversary later that year, on Oct. 12, of you know what. The wedding is the final culmination of the “Honeymoon Project” of Antoni Miralda of Barcelona, a sculptor cum performance artist and sometime creator of edible art.

Already Miralda has staged a betrothal for the two statues, a ceremony held Oct. 11, 1986, at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York that was attended by Mayor Ed Koch and members of the diplomatic corps. And he was in Los Angeles recently to present a proposal to CalArts for a collaborative gift for the happy couple--a 60-foot peace pipe, to be decorated with symbols of the New World and Columbus’ voyage.

Sounding both serious and enthusiastic about his unofficial project, he described it as an exchange of tributes between the New and Old Worlds and as an opportunity for people from many nations to share cultures and foster diplomacy through art. The response thus far, he said, has been encouraging.

Luckily, there is plenty of time, because Miralda has several years worth of preparations in mind. Some of the wedding gifts, a cake, clothes for the bridal party and a trousseau, are already being assembled around the world. The wedding dress is being made in Paris, as is a special hat, he said, a representation of the French Revolution. The bouquet will be made in Barcelona; New Orleans is making a necklace and, Miralda said, he hopes to get the Japanese to supply Columbus’ wedding costume.

“After all,” Miralda said of Columbus’ 1492 itinerary, “he was going there, but he never arrived.”

All the gifts will be paraded up New York’s Fifth Avenue in 1991, “during the Macy’s parade,” he said, which will serve as “the wedding procession.” The banquet following the procession will be at an airport with the two “families” using the wings of a 747 as their tables.

Come 1992, he said, two time capsules tagged “do not open until 2492” will be buried at the twin monuments in both countries.

When will it end? Of course the two statues aren’t really going to get married. It’s all symbolic, or as Miralda calls it, conceptual marriage. But that does not mean there won’t be a wedding ceremony.

Las Vegas. Where else?

“She loves Las Vegas,” Miralda said of Liberty. “It has a good landscape for the ceremony. There’s lots of space. We can have the reception in a parking lot.”

RSVP.