
This banner promoting fundraising for the Virginia Woolf statue was displayed at the banquet at the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf at the University of Reading.
Virginia Woolf will be seated on a bench at Richmond upon Thames, Riverside, for all to see — and sit next to — if a heritage project seeking £50,000 through crowd-funding is successful.
Arts and education charity Aurora Metro launched the project to create the first ever life-sized, full-figure bronze depiction of Woolf. The London Borough of Richmond has recently given the public the opportunity to comment on the proposal via a consultation document on its website. Deadline for commenting is Dec. 10.
Society says sculptor fails to capture Woolf
The executive council of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain has discussed the proposal and told the Borough of Richmond that, although it fully endorses the idea of a full-figure statue of Woolf in the Borough to memorialize the importance of her time there, unfortunately it feels that sculptor Laury Dizengremel has not captured Woolf’s likeness, according to an email the group sent members. The IVWS membership agrees.
See for yourself
You can see for yourself by visiting the Aurora Metro website, where you can view three photos depicting the statue. You can make a donation at that page as well. The statue project also has a Facebook page.
If you would like to volunteer to help raise funds for the Virginia Woolf statue, contact info@aurorametro.com
Movement for more women
The Woolf statue is part of a movement to see more women memorialized as statues around Great Britain.
In March 2016 in the New Statesman, Caroline Criado-Perez surveyed the nation’s statues by gender and discovered “a mere 2.7 per cent are of historical, non-royal women. If you’re a woman, your best chance at becoming a statue is to be a mythical or allegorical figure, a famous virgin, royal or nude.”
She has also launched a campaign to get a statue of a suffragette erected in Parliament Square and has a petition asking the Mayor of London to do so.
[…] 2017, arts and education charity Aurora Metro launched the project to commission, fund and erect a statue of Woolf in Richmond Upon Thames. It recognizes […]
[…] and education charity Aurora Metro launched the project to commission, fund and erect a statue of Woolf in Richmond Upon Thames in 2017. It […]
[…] launches today. The book is a companion piece for the heritage project that will create the first-ever life-sized, full-figure bronze statue of Virginia. Installation is planned for the terraces at Richmond upon Thames […]
It’s a nice idea, this life-size statue in Richmond, but it will not be the first ever life-sized one! (Though, to be honest, it will be the first bronze one.)
In the lobby of the Virginia Woolf Building of King’s College on King’s Way in London you can see a very nice life size statue: the Wax Virginia – See https://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/ahri/eventrecords/2015-2016/festival/weds21/virginia.aspx
Nell Toemen
Hi, Nell. Yes, the organizers (and the blog post) do mention that it is the first full-sized bronze statue. I, too, thought of the wax Virginia in the Woolf Building of King’s College, which I saw in June. Stay tuned for a post on that.