Revision of Bronze statue of Wallace from Sat, 2013-12-21 20:37

A Bronze Statue of Wallace: A lasting legacy of 2013


The Fund's campaign closed 7 months later on the 16th February 2013 and
exactly £25,000 was raised. Phase 2 of the fundraising campaign began in May and was managed by Entangled Bank Events and the Ancestor's Trail Several exciting fundraising events were organised by these organisations, the last of which took place on November 16th, 2013 (to see details of these click HERE and HERE).On the 15th July 2012 the Wallace Memorial Fund, with the enthusiastic support of our Patron Bill Bailey and our Treasurer, Wallace's grandson Dick, began a campaign to raise £50,000 for a 7 foot tall bronze statue of Wallace to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Wallace’s death in 2013 - the first three-dimensional likeness of Wallace ever made.

The statue was donated by the Memorial Fund to London's Natural History Museum, where it was unveiled by Sir David Attenborough on the 7th November 2013 - the 100th anniversary of Wallace's death. It has been installed outside the Darwin Centre 2 building (which contains many of Wallace's insect specimens) near the wildlife garden. A video of the unveiling can be seen HERE and photographs HERE 

The sculptor

The statue was sculpted by Anthony Smith who produced a highly acclaimed statue of Charles Darwin as a student for Cambridge University in 2009 plus many other impressive works  (see
http://anthonysmithart.co.uk/). 
Anthony has written a series of blog posts about the making of the statue and you can see them in order here: Number 1, Number 2, Number 3, Number 4, Number 5  The Wallace Fund's Chairman, George Beccaloni, did the research for the statue's clothing and collecting gear and worked closely with Anthony whilst he was sculpting the piece.

Images of the statue in its final position can be seen HERE.

More statues to come?

A campaign has begun to raise funds for a copy of the statue for the new Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum in Singapore. The Sarawak Museum would also like a copy. Ultimately the Wallace Fund would also like to see copies of the statue in Indonesia and Brazil as well!  

Copyright John Cummings

The statue shortly after it was unveiled by Sir David Attenborough. Copyright John Cummings

Scratchpads developed and conceived by (alphabetical): Ed Baker, Katherine Bouton Alice Heaton Dimitris Koureas, Laurence Livermore, Dave Roberts, Simon Rycroft, Ben Scott, Vince Smith