Elsie Inglis statue: Backlash against sculptor Alexander Stoddart's commission is reverse sexism – John McLellan

Controversy is never far away when new statues go up, with lifelike effigies dismissed as mannequins and more figurative affairs as self-indulgent.
Alexander Stoddart designed the statue of economist Adam Smith on Edinburgh's Royal Mile (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)Alexander Stoddart designed the statue of economist Adam Smith on Edinburgh's Royal Mile (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
Alexander Stoddart designed the statue of economist Adam Smith on Edinburgh's Royal Mile (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Edinburgh’s High Street statues of Adam Smith and David Hume have two things in common. Firstly, they look like the people they represent and fit in with their surroundings, and secondly they were created by royal sculptor Alexander Stoddart.

When his James Clerk-Maxwell monument on George Street was unveiled in 2008, The Scotsman’s renowned art critic Duncan Macmillan praised its traditional form because it was “no place for any shrill assertion of modernity”.

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Now Mr Stoddart is to produce the statue of nursing pioneer and First World War heroine Dr Elsie Inglis, he has been thrust into such an argument, not just about what it should represent, but his fitness for the job. Other artists pitching for the work attacked him in an open letter because he lacks “clear links with Elsie Inglis or feminism” and he is “an elderly white man”.

As a 60-year-old male whitey, those who want him un-commissioned will dismiss my views, but when I donated to the original 2017 appeal, I don’t recall any wider political aim, or for it to recognise emerging artists, as they claim. Nor were those points made on the crowd-funding page, so it’s impossible to tell if donors were motivated by anything other than a desire to see the statue erected.

But forget the ageism, reverse-sexism and inverse-racism, it’s worth asking if another High Street Stoddart risks it becoming a personal theme park.

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