Four internationally exhibited sculptors have been chosen to produce concept proposals for a permanent monument to Dame Muriel Spark in Princes Street Gardens
The city of Edinburgh has advanced a public art competition that will result in the first permanent memorial to a woman in Princes Street Gardens’ 200-year history. From an open call that drew 54 submissions from across the uk, Europe, North and South America and Asia, a judging panel has named a four-artist shortlist to develop proposals for a statue of Dame Muriel Spark.
The chosen sculptors will receive a concept design fee and spend the next two months preparing a detailed proposal before the jury narrows the field to a single artist.
The four shortlisted names all have strong connections to Scotland and international exhibition records.
The selection process involved visits to the proposed location in the gardens and study sessions with items from the author’s papers at the National Library of Scotland. Curators also presented a number of iconic photographs of Spark to highlight her variable appearance and spirited persona, asking artists to respond to that versatility and to produce work that captures Spark’s essence.
The artists and their notable works
The shortlist comprises Laura Ford, Tania Kovats, Louise Gibson and Jacqueline Donachie. Each artist brings a distinct practice: Ford is known for figurative installations including the faceless, evocative Weeping Girls, while Kovats created Rivers, a conceptual project that assembled one hundred water specimens from rivers around the British Isles, distilled and stored in sealed vessels inside a constructed boathouse. These two works are both represented at the outdoor sculpture park Jupiter Artland, underlining the shortlisted artists’ track record with site-responsive public projects.
Louise Gibson graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2009 and has presented large-scale sculpture in prominent Scottish programmes, including a solo presentation at The Edinburgh Art Festival and participation in Glasgow International. Jacqueline Donachie, who splits her practice across Glasgow, has shown work at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow and Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery and took part in Glasgow Slow Down as part of the 2014 Commonwealth Games cultural programme. Together the quartet demonstrates a range of material approaches and public-art experience that the judging panel sought for this important commission.
Site visits, archive access and judging criteria
Shortlisted artists were invited to inspect the designated spot in Princes Street Gardens and to examine selected artefacts from Spark’s archive at the National Library of Scotland. The archive review was designed to give sculptors tangible entry points into Spark’s life and work: letters, photographs and ephemera showed what curators called the author’s chameleonic nature and her quixotic temperament. The judging panel includes writer Jackie Kay, Spark’s long-term companion and sculptor Penelope Jardine, alongside specialists in visual arts, public-commissioning and heritage architecture, all charged with balancing artistic ambition, site sensitivity and public meaning.
Artistic brief and expectations
Panel members have encouraged proposals that do more than depict likeness; the brief asks for a work that renders Muriel Spark’s spirit rather than offering a straightforward portrait. That approach favours conceptual responses that can operate within the high-visibility context of the gardens while reflecting Spark’s literary significance. The shortlisted artists will develop full concept proposals over the coming months, with a view to the panel reaching its final decision in July.
Budget, timeline and civic significance
The commission is fully funded by long-standing Edinburgh philanthropists Morag and James Anderson, with up to £100,000 allocated for the creation, fabrication and installation of the final work. Following the shortlist stage, the winning artist will move into a detailed design stage that is scheduled to complete in autumn 2026, with installation of the final sculpture expected by autumn 2027. Shortlisted artists will be paid for concepts, ensuring professional support while the project reaches its technical and planning milestones.
Broader context and public memory
The commission arrives against a backdrop in which Edinburgh has relatively few female monuments: there are fewer than ten statues of women in the city compared with 79 statues of men and roughly 15 animal figures, which include Wojtek the Bear in Princes Street Gardens. Commissioner Morag Anderson noted that the all-female shortlist was not an explicit aim of the panel, yet it resonates with the fact that Spark’s fiction often foregrounded women. The project therefore combines a celebration of a major novelist with a small step toward rebalancing public representation in the city’s monumentscape.
As the competition proceeds, observers will watch how the shortlisted sculptors translate archival material, site conditions and the brief’s emphasis on spirit into tangible proposals. The resulting memorial will be both a new focal point in a beloved public space and a lasting tribute to a writer whose novels, including The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, have shaped modern reading around the world.
