The ruination of Elsie Inglis

A campaign to install a statue of a woman on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile has taken an unfortunate and yet perhaps sadly predictable turn after the charity’s trustees decided to unceremoniously cancel their open call for proposals and appoint royal-approved neoclassical sculptor and project advisor Alexander Stoddart for the job. Statue for Elsie Inglis was initially conceived as an opportunity to honour the suffragist and medical pioneer, but has been so catastrophically mishandled it now seems more likely to tarnish her memory. The controversy has been rumbling on for a while, and has been reignited this week by the charity releasing a statement saying they've thought about it, and they're going to stick with their questionable decision to override the tender process. 

You might not be aware of the work of Alexander Stoddart – he’s responsible for a large number of public sculptures in the neoclassical style that look like they’ve been there since the dawn of time but, shock twist, they’re actually quite new. He likes to put modern historical figures in togas for some reason. He’s deeply critical of both modern and contemporary art. Mega lol. 

After fundraising on the basis that women should be represented within the city’s public artwork, it seems odd that Statue for Elsie Inglis should decide to preclude women from even applying to sculpt the actual artwork. When challenged publicly, one of the trustees responded: “The action of certain parties seems to be to promote women’s rights rather than honour the work of Elsie Inglis,” prompting the inevitable response of – why not do both? Should you not be doing both? Don’t you want to do both? Requests for clarification have thus far been ignored. 

Requests to elaborate on who was actually involved in this decision-making panel have also gone unanswered. However, the trustees whose identities have been made public do not have any experience in or connection with Scottish sculpture. It reveals a peculiar arrogance that they would feel qualified to make decisions around commissioning public statuary in Scotland’s capital city, and this seems to be the key issue – the people behind the charity are so ill-equipped to make decisions around public artwork, they don’t even understand what they’ve done wrong.

There is a distinction between mandating the sculptor be a woman, and flat-out removing the possibility that the sculptor could be a woman.

Had the competition remained open, and an appropriately informed, qualified, experienced panel – after assessing all the applicants – come to the decision  that Alexander Stoddart was the best candidate to produce a sculpture of a celebrated woman (now, in 2022), then fair enough. Great. Put her in a toga, just like the sculpture of Enlightenment philosopher David Hume (who definitely will have dressed like that when lecturing in Edinburgh, in the 18th Century). 

It is a shame to see Elsie Inglis become the victim of the internalised misogyny that tells people that this man, a professor no less, who has been appointed by the King of England no less, must be the best person for the job, so much so that we won’t even look at any of the other applicants. It’s sad that her reputation has been sullied in this way. And it’s sad for the city of Edinburgh that our streets will once again be cluttered with neoclassical nonsense, when the opportunity existed to produce something more interesting.

The sculptural community in Scotland is wide and varied and it’s disappointing to see this opportunity for a different, less embarrassing artist to become part of the civic fabric has been squandered by some people who don’t really seem to know what they’re doing.