The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Museums and exhibits

Morgan exhibitions

New York City's Morgan Library & Museum mounted three showings of the original manuscript, with its first showing in 1994, on the occasion of the story's 50th anniversary of publication, followed by one celebrating the author's centennial of birth in 2000, with its last and largest exhibition in 2014 honouring the novella's 70th anniversary.

The 1994 exhibition displayed the original manuscript, translated by the museum's art historian Ruth Kraemer,[128] as well as a number of the story's watercolours drawn from the Morgan's permanent collection. Also included with the exhibits was a 20-minute video it produced, My Grown-Up Friend, Saint-Exupéry, narrated by actor Macaulay Culkin,[Note 12] along with photos of the author, correspondence to Consuelo, a signed first edition of The Little Prince, and several international editions in other languages.[92]

In January 2014, the museum mounted a third, significantly larger, exhibition centered on the novella's creative origins and its history. The major showing of The Little Prince: A New York Story celebrated the story's 70th anniversary.[62] It examined both the novella's New York origins and Saint-Exupéry's creative processes, looking at his story and paintings as they evolved from conceptual germ form into progressively more refined versions and finally into the book's highly polished first edition. It was as if visitors were able to look over his shoulder as he worked, according to curator Christine Nelson. Funding for the 2014 exhibition was provided by several benefactors, including The Florence Gould Foundation, The Caroline Macomber Fund, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Air France and the New York State Council on the Arts.[61]

The new, more comprehensive exhibits included 35 watercolor paintings and 25 of the work's original 140 handwritten manuscript pages,[130] with his almost illegible handwriting penciled onto 'Fidelity' watermarked onion skin paper. The autograph manuscript pages included struck-through content that was not published in the novella's first edition. As well, some 43 preparatory pencil drawings that evolved into the story's illustrations accompanied the manuscript, many of them dampened by moisture that rippled its onion skin media.[131][132] One painting depicted the prince floating above Earth wearing a yellow scarf was wrinkled, having been crumpled up and thrown away before being retrieved for preservation.[47] Another drawing loaned from Silvia Hamilton's grandson depicted the diminutive prince observing a sunset on his home asteroid; two other versions of the same drawing were also displayed alongside it allowing visitors to observe the drawing's progressive refinement.[59] The initial working manuscript and sketches, displayed side by side with pages from the novella's first edition, allowed viewers to observe the evolution of Saint-Exupéry's work.

Shortly before departing the United States to rejoin his reconnaissance squadron in North Africa in its struggle against Nazi Germany, Saint-Exupéry appeared unexpectedly in military uniform at the door of his intimate friend, Silvia Hamilton. He presented his working manuscript and its preliminary drawings in a "rumpled paper bag", placed onto her home's entryway table, offering, "I'd like to give you something splendid, but this is all I have".[62][71][79][132][133] Several of the manuscript pages bore accidental coffee stains and cigarette scorch marks.[47] The Morgan later acquired the 30,000-word manuscript from Hamilton in 1968, with its pages becoming the centrepieces of its exhibitions on Saint-Exupéry's work. The 2014 exhibition also borrowed artifacts and the author's personal letters from the Saint-Exupéry-d'Gay Estate,[Note 13] as well as materials from other private collections, libraries and museums in the United States and France.[134] Running concurrent with its 2014 exhibition, the Morgan held a series of lectures, concerts and film showings, including talks by Saint-Exupéry biographer Stacy Schiff, writer Adam Gopnik, and author Peter Sís on his new work The Pilot and The Little Prince: The Life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,[133][135]

Additional exhibits included photos of Saint-Exupéry by Life photojournalist John Phillips, other photos of the author's New York area homes,[61] an Orson Welles screenplay of the novella the filmmaker attempted to produce as a movie in collaboration with Walt Disney,[43][62][Note 14] as well as one of the few signed copies extant of The Little Prince, gifted to Hamilton's 12-year-old son.[Note 15]

Permanent exhibits

• In Le Bourget, Paris, France, the Air and Space Museum of France established a special exhibit honoring Saint-Exupéry, and which displays many of his literary creations. Among them are various early editions of The Little Prince. Remnants of the Free French Air Force P-38 Lightning in which he disappeared, and which were recovered from the Mediterranean in 2004, are also on view.
• In Hakone, Japan there was the Museum of The Little Prince featuring outdoor squares and sculptures such as the B-612 Asteroid, the Lamplighter Square, and a sculpture of the Little Prince. The museum grounds additionally featured a Little Prince Park along with the Consuelo Rose Garden. The museum permanently closed in March 2023. [136]
• In Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, there is an imitation French village, Petite France, which has adapted the story elements of The Little Prince into its architecture and monuments. There are several sculptures of the story's characters, and the village also offers overnight housing in some of the French-style homes. Featured are the history of The Little Prince, an art gallery, and a small amphitheatre situated in the middle of the village for musicians and other performances. The enterprise's director stated that in 2009 the village received a half million visitors.[94][137][138]

Special exhibitions

• The Little Prince as part of a street art project in Funchal (Madeira)In 1996 the Danish sculptor Jens Galschiøt unveiled an artistic arrangement consisting of seven blocks of granite asteroids 'floating' in a circle around a 2-metre tall planet Earth. The artistic universe was populated by bronze sculpture figures that the little prince met on his journeys. As in the book, the prince discovers that "the essential is invisible to the eye, and only by the heart can you really see". The work was completed at the start of 1996 and placed in the central square of Fuglebjerg, Denmark,[139] but was later stolen from an exhibition in Billund in 2011.[140]
• During 2009 in São Paulo, Brazil, the giant Oca Art Exhibition Centre presented The Little Prince as part of The Year of France and The Little Prince. The displays covered over 10,000 square metres on four floors, examining Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince and their philosophies, as visitors passed through theme areas of the desert, different worlds, stars and the cosmos. The ground floor of the exhibit area was laid out as a huge map of the routes flown by the author and Aeropostale in South America and around the world. Also included was a full-scale replica of his Caudron Simoun, crashed in a simulated Sahara Desert.[141][142][143]
• In 2012 the Catalan architect Jan Baca unveiled a sculpture in Terrassa, Catalonia showing the Little Prince along with the sentence, "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye".[144]
• In February 2022, nearly eight decades after it was written, "The Little Prince" arrived in Paris. The exhibit began on February 17 and ended on June 26. It contained 600 items, including photographs, poems, and newspaper clippings relating to "The Little Prince."[145]

Places

Playground

• One of the "story playgrounds" – a series of playgrounds themed after famous children's stories in Holon, Israel – is themed after The Little Prince. It features sculptures and play structures depicting scenes and characters from the book.

Schools

• L'école Le Petit Prince is the public elementary school in the small community of Genech in northern France, dedicated in 1994 upon the merger of two former schools. With nine classrooms and a library, its building overlooks the village's Place Terre des Hommes,[146] a square also named in tribute to Saint-Exupéry's 1939 philosophical memoir, Terre des hommes.
• A K–6 elementary school on Avro Road in Maple, Ontario, Canada, was also opened in 1994 as L'école élémentaire catholique Le Petit Prince. Its enrollment expanded from 30 students in its first year to some 325 children by 2014. One of Saint-Exupéry's colourful paintings of the prince is found on its website's welcome page.[147]

Avenue

• In southern Brazil, in the city of Florianópolis, there is the Avenida Pequeno Príncipe (Little Prince Avenue in Portuguese), whose name is a tribute to Saint-Exupéry, who passed through the city during his aviator career, an event that became part of the local culture.[148]
• At 972 Fifth Avenue in New York City, a bronze statue was unveiled of the Little Prince by French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna in September 2023. The project to create the sculpture was initiated by the American Society of Le Souvenir Français, in partnership with the Antoine de Saint Exupéry Youth Foundation. The sculpture sits outside the headquarters of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, overlooking the pedestrians on Fifth Avenue. The four-foot-tall sculpture, created by Jean-Marc de Pas, was carved from clay and cast in bronze in one single piece in his studio in Normandy.[149]

Insignia and awards

• Prior to its decommissioning in 2010, the GR I/33 (later renamed as the 1/33 Belfort Squadron), one of the French Air Force squadrons Saint-Exupéry flew with, adopted the image of the Little Prince as part of the squadron and tail insignia of its Dassault Mirage fighter jets.[150] Some of the fastest jets in the world were flown with The Prince gazing over their pilots' shoulders.
• The Little Prince Literary Award for Persian fiction by writers under the age of 15, commemorating the title of Saint-Exupéry's famous work, was created in Iran by the Cheragh-e Motale'eh Literary Foundation. In 2012, some 250 works by young authors were submitted for first stage review according to the society's secretary Maryam Sistani, with the selection of the best three writers from 30 finalists being conducted in Tehran that September.[151][152]
• Several other Little Prince Awards have also been established in Europe, meant to promote achievement and excellence in a variety of fields such as in assistance to autistic children, child literacy, children's literature (by adults), Puppetry theatre and theatre arts.[153][154][155]

Numismatics and philatelic

• Before France adopted the euro as its currency, Saint-Exupéry and drawings from The Little Prince were on the 50-franc banknote; the artwork was by Swiss designer Roger Pfund.[74][156] Among the anti-counterfeiting measures on the banknote was micro-printed text from Le Petit Prince, visible with a strong magnifying glass.[157] Additionally, a 100-franc commemorative coin was also released in 2000, with Saint-Exupéry's image on its obverse, and that of the Little Prince on its reverse.[158]
• In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the writer's untimely death, Israel issued a stamp honoring "Saint-Ex" and The Little Prince in 1994.[159] Philatelic tributes have been printed in at least 24 other countries as of 2011.[160]

Astronomy

• The B612 Foundation is a private foundation created to track Near-Earth objects that might pose a threat to Earth, and is dedicated to protecting the planet from asteroid strikes, similar to the Tunguska event of 1908. The private foundation was founded by a group of U.S. scientists and astronauts, including Clark Chapman, Piet Hut, Rusty Schweickart and Ed Lu in October 2002. The non-profit organization is named in honour of the prince's home asteroid.[161]
• An asteroid discovered in 1975, 2578 Saint-Exupéry, was also named after the author of The Little Prince.[162]
• Another asteroid discovered in 1993 was named 46610 Bésixdouze, which is French for "B six twelve". The asteroid's number, 46610, becomes B612 in hexadecimal notation. B-612 was the name of the prince's home asteroid.
• In 2003 a small asteroid moon, Petit-Prince, discovered earlier in 1998, was named in part after The Little Prince.[163]

Professional wrestling

French professional wrestler Daniel Dubail was billed as Le Petit Prince.[164] Pakistani-British professional wrestler Mohammed Allam was billed as The Little Prince.[165]

The Little Prince Day

Since 2020, June 29 is International Little Prince Day. This date was chosen to commemorate the birth of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, which occurred on June 29, 1900. The Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Foundation started the initiative striving to promote the humanist values carried by the book published in 1943. Mark Osborne was one of the first personalities to participate in the Little Prince Day 2020.[166]