Friday, February 3, 2012

Lots of statue ideas

It is high time we looked at statues. This blog champions existing and nascent projects related to Mary, trying to catalogue the world of Wollstonecraft. In an attempt to be of service to Mary on the Green, the campaign to raise a significant tangible memorial (the first anywhere in the world), A Vindication of the Rights of Mary will highlight sculpture projects to learn from. This series is intended to run weekly.

Last Friday was the tale of Dr Salter, the theft of his Thames-side statue, and the death knell, in my view, for any chance of Mary being cast in bronze. It is just too precious a metal to leave lying around a park. Strangely enough, mere days later, up pops a similar statue, stolen a decade earlier and suddenly rediscovered, not melted down as had been feared. So there is hope.

Here are some ideas for sculpture posts: American statues (this is a good month for that). Statues of inspirational figures, such as revolutionaries and educators. Interactive statues -- not animatronic ones, but those that draw passersby or pilgrims to engage with them. Boring statues on pedestals and bad sculpture everywhere: if you can't be a good example, serve as a terrible warning. Memorials to women, still rare enough to be remarkable. Recent additions to the cityscape. Projects in progress. Non-statue sculptures. 

Suggestions are welcome: names or places or images. Can you tell me about a sculpture that the future Mary Wollstonecraft one should owe something to? The comments are open.

There are also related resources, such as the Interntional Directory of Sculpture Parks. New York's Madison Square Park is noted for its presentation of public art, and the 2011 Echo there, by Jaume Plensa, caught the influential eye of Alex the architect....

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Statue of Emmeline Pankhurst in Victoria Gardens, London.
Fin Fahey [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons.
Pop-up thanks to the eagle-eyed economist, and IDSP via SB, who can have her full name here should she wish it.

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