Efforts to ensure that modern values are reflected in public sculpture began well before the Black Lives Matter protests five years ago. Those demonstrations saw the statue of the Bristol slave trader Edward Colston dragged from its pedestal and dumped in the harbour, while multiple Confederate monuments were removed from cities in the southern US.

Statues in Britain have gradually reflected evolving social values. A statue of the suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst was unveiled in Westminster in 1930, two years after women were finally granted the vote on equal terms to men. Nelson Mandela joined Winston Churchill in Parliament Square in 2007. The nurse Mary Seacole became the first named black, Caribbean woman to be honoured with a UK statue in 2016. In the same year, the Monumental Welsh Women campaign was established. It set itself a target of five statues, and has only one to go.

But are statues of individuals out of step with democratic sensibilities? Rather than raise subscriptions to cast models of great men and women from the past, contemporary backers of public art often opt for different styles and forms – for example, the........

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