Public sculpture has become a focus for controversy at this volatile time, making it an opportune, indeed overdue, moment for an online webinar on Toppling Statues. The event is being co-hosted by The Burlington Magazine and the newly-formed Public Statues and Sculpture Association (PSSA).

It is intended to stimulate open-minded discussion and to help contextualise and advance understanding of the thousands of sculptures in public spaces in the UK and across the globe. It will constitute a serious academic debate to highlight the sculptures and their makers, the subjects depicted, their social and economic histories, and the ways in which such sculptures are viewed today.

This is a live online event hosted via Zoom. Instructions for joining the webinar will be emailed to registered attendees at least 48 hours before the event.

If you do not receive the log in details, or have any other technical questions, please email jamie.haskell@courtauld.ac.uk.

Attendance is free and registration is required.

Timetable

Monday 23 November

10.00 Welcome and introduction (Joanna Barnes and Dr Holly Trusted FSA)

Chair: Dr Holly Trusted FSA

10.15 Paper 1 Dr Ian Morley: The Struggle Within: Monuments for Memory, Monuments for Identity

10.35 Paper 2 Dr Mark Stocker FSA: The Future will be Grateful for thy Universal Goodness: 20 Talking Points about Public Statuary Now

10.55 Paper 3 Cllr. Sonia Winifred: Statues, Monuments, Street Names in Lambeth with links to Slavery and Colonialism

11.15 Questions and debate

11.30 Paper 4 Dr Jean Wilson MBE FSA: Fallacies in Duration

11.50 Paper 5 Dr Jonathan Black FRHistS: "A war memorial in every sense": Charles Sargeant Jagger MC and the memorial to the Royal Regiment of Artillery, London, 1925-2020

12.10 Questions and debate. Break.

12.30 Paper 6 Sir Geoff Palmer OBE: Slavery and Public Statuary in Scotland

12.50 Paper 7 Michael Sandle RA: The Wrong Thing in the Wrong Way for the Wrong Reasons

1.10 Questions and debate. Break.

Chair: Dr Michael Hall FSA

2.00 Keynote paper 1 Nicholas Penny: 'For them his ears gush'd blood'

2.20 Paper 8 Professor Paula Murphy: Kings, clerics and candelabra – statue controversy in Ireland

2.40 Paper 9 Sabin Howard: A Sculptor’s Perspective: The Importance of Culture

3.00 Keynote paper 2 David Aaronovitch, Statues as Proxies in the Culture War

3.20 Questions and debate. Break

3.30 Panel 1: Nick Hornby; Martin Jennings FRSS; Simon Carter; Melissa Hamnett.

4.00 Closing statement.

4.15 End of first day.

Tuesday 24 November

10.00 Brief introduction and summary of previous day’s talks and discussion (Dr Holly Trusted FSA)

Chair: Dr Roger Bowdler FSA

10.15 Paper 10 Dr Marie Daouda: Must Rhodes fall? The idolatry behind modern iconoclasm

10.35 Paper 11 Hew Locke: Mindful Vandalism

10.50 Paper 12 Professor Madge Dresser: Sculpture wars? Some reflections on the toppling of the Colston statue in Bristol

11.05 Paper 13 Dr Helen Paul: The Cult of Colston

11.25 Paper 14 Alexander Adams: Institutional support for iconoclasm of 2020

11.45 Questions and debate. Break.

Chair: Joanna Barnes

1.00 Paper 15 James Hall: Dialogues with the Dead: Creative Confrontations with the Past

1.20 Paper 16 Dr Roger Bowdler FSA: ‘Rankly bad and altogether despicable’: Looking at London’s Open-Air Statuary by Lord Edward Gleichen (1928)

1.40 Questions and debate. Break.

2.10 Paper 17 Edwin Fountain: Considering Civil War Monuments

2.30 Paper 18 Professor Mary Ann Steggles: Vandalism Makes them Visible: Colonial Statues in India in the Age of the Black Lives Matter Movement

2.50 Paper 19 Sokari Douglas-Camp CBE: Toppling Power

3.10 Paper 20 Petrina Dacres: Marcus Garvey, Post-Colonial Memory and the Unstable Image of Blackness

3.30 Questions and debate. Break.

3.40 Panel 2: Trevor Sterling; Iain Black; Jean-François Manicom; Jo Baxendale.

4.00 Closing statement.

4.15 Close

Biographies of the speakers and abstracts of the papers will be emailed to those who have registered a minimum of two days before the webinar.

For further information about this webinar please contact office@pssauk.org

For PSSA membership enquiries please contact membership@pssauk.org

Public Statues and Sculpture Association

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