It’s a perilous time to be a statue. Not that it has ever
been a particularly secure occupation, exposed as statues are to
the elements, bird droppings and political winds.
Just ask Queen Victoria, whose rounded frame perches
atop hundreds of plinths across the Commonwealth, with an air
of solemn, severe solidity. But in 1963 in Quebec, members of a
separatist paramilitary group stuck dynamite under the dress of
her local statue. It exploded with a force so great that her head
was found 100 yards away.
Today, the head is on display in a museum,with her body
preserved in a room some miles away. The art historian Vincent
Giguère said that “the fact it’s damaged is what makes it so
important.”
There’s another reason to conserve the beheaded
Victoria. Statues of women, standing alone and demanding
attention in a public space, are extremely rare.
To be made a statue, a woman had to be a naked muse,
royalty or the mother of God. Or occasionally, an icon of war,
justice or virtue: Boadicea in her chariot in London, the Statue
of Liberty in New York.
Still, of 925 public statues in Britain, only 158 are women
standing on their own. Of those, 110 are allegorical or mythical,
and 29 are of Queen Victoria.
Julia Baird, The New York Times. September 4, 2017. Adaptado.