Almost all the monuments on the territory of Moscow State University are dedicated to domestic figures of science and culture, with one exception; the 2009, monument to the American poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892) by "People's Artist of Russia" Alexander Burganov. The sculpture was unveiled near the First Humanitarian Building and the ceremony was attended by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.
The Whitman monument in Moscow was erected in response to the opening of a monument to Alexander Pushkin on the territory of George Washington University in the USA. The inscription on the pedestal reads: “You, Russians, and we, Americans! .. are so far from each other, we seem so different, but still ... in something most important, our homelands are so similar...”
