In response to the French gift of the Statue of Liberty, American diplomat Robert John Thompson sponsored a national subscription to erect an equestrian statue of La Fayette above his tomb on the occasion of the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. The project was entrusted to sculptor Paul Wayland Bartlett, but he missed the 1900 deadline and his was eventually erected in 1908 in the central square of the Louvre Palace. It was transferred in 1985 to its current location on the Cours-la-Reine, in preparation for the Grand Louvre remodeling.