[11/10/2020 Update – the statue, Mary on the Green, honors Mary Wollstonecraft, not Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, her daughter]
If you are going to make a statue honoring author Mary Wollstonecraft, it's probably a good idea to make one that doesn't suck.
From The Guardian:
Hambling's work, cast in silvered bronze, "encourages a visual conversation with the obstacles Wollstonecraft overcame", the artist said. "The ideals she strived for, and what she made happen … a vital contemporary discourse for all that is still to be achieved."
From The Evening Standard:
It immediately attracted criticism, with novelist Jojo Moyes saying: "I think it would have been nice to commemorate Mary Wollstonecraft with her clothes on.
"You don't see a lot of statues commemorating male political figures without their pants on."
Fellow writer Imogen Hermes Gower said she hated the "sexy toned female" figure.
She added: "Nameless, nude and conventionally attractive is the only way women have ever been acceptable in public sculpture."
