Gillian Wearing’s sculpture honouring suffragist Millicent Fawcett joins the all male company of 11 statues of Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi and others.
Source: Adrian Dennis/ AFP/Getty/Artnet
The first statue of female activist Millicent Fawcett by London-based Turner Prize-winning artist Gillian Wearing was unveiled on April 24 to mark 100 years since certain women got the right to vote in the UK. Women had to be over 30 and own property to be able to vote. UK’s Prime Minister Theresa May attended the unveiling, news.artnet.com reports.
Millicent Fawcett is shown holding a banner reading : “Courage calls to courage everywhere.” The activist used the phrase talking about the death of another suffragist, Emily Davison. In 1913, she ran onto the racetrack in the Epsom Derby to raise awareness for women’s rights and was hit and fatally injured by King George V's horse. The moment was captured on film and declared an accident.
Fawcett was president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), an organisation that struggled for giving voting rights to women, and used nonviolent methods to fight for equal rights. She also co-founded the first women’s college in Cambridge.
The frieze of the memorial’s plinth features photographs of other female suffragists and men who shared their views.
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