The great-great niece of feminist Dr. Elsie Inglis is thrilled that the Royal sculptor has been selected to create her statue, after a bitter dispute over the statue’s commissioning procedure.
Kathy McGuinness told that she was “very appreciative” to Team Elsie for their “tireless” work on the project.
Alexander Stoddart, who had not submitted a design, was contacted by the Edinburgh statue campaign.
The decision has sparked outrage among artists on social media.
Now, trustees for the charity A Statue for Elsie Inglis have suspended the campaign, claiming that “the amount of animosity conveyed by some contributors” was “borderline libelous.”
The dispute began when the charity trustees responsible for designing the statue on the Royal Mile canceled their competition to pick an artist and instead appointed Mr. Stoddart.
Observing the cortege of the Queen in Edinburgh last month prompted a reassessment, according to the report, which stated that the statue “ought to meet the historical consciousness of the Royal Mile.”
However, artists criticized the charity’s choice, stating that it violated its competition criteria, despite raising over $50,000.
Sculptors, some of whom had spent hundreds of hours on their competition submissions, said that the decision was “incorrect” and “unfair.”
Elsie Inglis was Ms. McGuinness’s grandfather’s aunt.
Ms. McGuinness stated that while she could not speak for Elsie’s other descendants around the world, her immediate family supported the choice to commission the Royal sculptor.
She stated, “Elsie is a significant character in Edinburgh’s history and deserves a lasting civic monument of the same caliber as sculptures of men on the Royal Mile.”
“Her statue will be here long after we are all gone, therefore its quality must be enduring, consistent with other monuments on Edinburgh’s historic Royal Mile, and appreciative of Elsie’s role in Scottish history.”
She said, “We are thrilled that Alexander Stoddart will honor Elsie with a statue in Edinburgh, and that Elsie will finally receive the accolades she deserves in Scotland.”
“Through their hard effort, Team Elsie has assured that future generations of girls will see Elsie on par with the males commemorated in statues throughout Edinburgh, as Elsie attempted to do throughout her lifetime.”
However, other artists, like Natasha Phoenix of East Lothian, have criticized the charity’s choice.
“It is unfair to launch the commission and then ask a prominent male sculptor with ties to the Royal Family to complete it while commissions are still open,” she remarked.
‘Suboptimal call’
July saw the release of creative brief inviting artists to submit proposals for the sculpture.
It was expected that three artists would be selected and each would get $2,000 to create a model of their concept. Then, one of the three sculptures would be chosen as the winner.
However, the competition’s sponsor stopped accepting submissions on October 8, almost two weeks before the deadline.
According to artists, they spent months crafting concepts that they were not permitted to submit.
The Statue for Elsie Inglis organization stated that they made the “difficult choice” to suspend the call for artists because the initial call was “inadequate.”
It is believed that Mr. Stoddart, the King’s Ordinary Sculptor in Scotland, has yet to accept the contract.
In 1864, Dr. Inglis, who was born into an affluent family, founded maternity care for underprivileged women in Edinburgh.
When World War I began in 1914, she wished to serve on the front lines, but the war office informed her that women were not permitted.
However, Britain’s allies permitted her to assist, and she established seventeen Scottish women’s hospitals for wounded soldiers around Europe.
Together with coworkers and acquaintances from the suffragist movement, she gathered the equivalent of £53 million in present-day currency to purchase medical supplies for people on the front lines.
On the Royal Mile, a bronze statue is planned at the site of the maternity hospital she founded.
The only sculptures of women in Edinburgh are of Queen Victoria and Mary, Queen of Scots, neither of which are located on the city’s ancient Royal Mile.
