Mark Zuckerberg divides opinion with seven-foot statue of wife Priscilla Chan

Mark Zuckerberg has unveiled an elaborate piece of artwork in honor of his wife, Priscilla Chan.

On Tuesday, August 13, the Meta founder took to Instagram to show off a photo of Chan alongside a seven-foot sculpture of herself displayed in their backyard. “Bringing back the Roman tradition of making sculptures of your wife. Thanks @danielarsham,” he captioned the image.

The statue itself featured Chan’s likeness made from turquoise stone, as the sculpture was draped in a metallic dress. However, many followers were split over Zuckerberg’s dramatic gesture for his wife. While some fans loved the statue, others viewed it as being too over the top.

In the comments, several women shared how they’d love for their own partners to turn themselves into works of art. “Get yourself a man who makes sculptures of you,” one comment read, while another commenter agreed: “This is my dream! If you made of me.”

“Well isn’t someone super special!” a third person said. “That’s a very nice heirloom to have for decades, centuries, and connected to the Zuck family, a plus!!!!”

Others had no idea what to make of the sculpture. “Yikes. This is quite unflattering,” one person wrote. Another agreed, writing: “Cringe AF.”

“Next is the divorce, because a statue doesn’t make up for an apology or a one-sided love or repair an already broken bond,” a third user claimed. “Mark my words. A woman who wants to leave and has reached the point of being worshiped won’t be kept by a statue. If she wanted to stay, you wouldn’t worship her, she’d worship you.”

Zuckerberg and Chan first met as students at Harvard University in 2003. Chan earned a bachelor’s degree in biology, while Zuckerberg did not finish due to the success of creating Facebook when he was only 19 years old. Chan later earned her medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco.

The couple got married on May 19, 2012. They have three daughters together: Maxima, born in December 2015, August born in August 2017, and Aurelia born in March 2023.

Earlier this year, a photo of the Facebook creator with a beard went viral online as many people thirsted over the fake photo. The image was taken from an Instagram video that Zuckerberg had posted on April 18, in which he announced a “new version of Meta AI”. After he had shared the video, a user on X (formerly Twitter) photoshopped a beard and a mustache onto Zuckerberg’s face, garnering more than two million views on the platform.

Users were quick to address the photo being fake. Zuckerberg even addressed how much people liked the way he looked with facial hair, as he commented on The Shade Room’s Instagram repost of his altered face: “Okay who did this?”

At the time, even Gwyneth Paltrow had weighed in on the viral photo. She also took to the comments section of The Shade Room’s post to share her reaction to the viral image. “He looks like my ex hubs in this pic,” Paltrow commented, referring to her ex-husband Chris Martin.