Selection Panel Named for Mary Seacole Memorial

Baroness Valerie Amos, Leader of the House of Lords, will chair a selection panel for an artist to design a memorial to Mary Seacole, the Jamaican Crimean War nurse, near the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London.
The Mary Seacole Memorial Statue Appeal, which appointed the selection panel, said advertisements would be published later this year asking artists for ‘expressions of interest’.
The commission will be open to all artists worldwide and the panel will be looking for a design that represents Nurse Seacole and reflects the scope of her activities and journey from Jamaica to the Crimea, via London, and back to Britain. The statue is expected to be sited at the St. Thomas’ Hospital at Westminster Bridge across the Thames from the Houses of Parliament. Other members of the panel are Philomena Davidson, the former President of the Royal Society of British Sculptors; Professor Elizabeth Anionwu, Head of the Mary Seacole Centre for Nursing Practice at Thames Valley University; Lady Hollick, Chair of Arts Council England, London; Lord Smith of Finsbury, the former Culture Secretary; Stephen Deuchar, Director of Tate Britain; Alexander Amosu, a ringtones billionaire; and Steve McGuire, Director of capital, estates and facilities management at St. Thomas’ Hospital.
The memorial will celebrate the life and work of the self-taught nurse, herbalist and businesswoman who made her own way to the Crimea in 1854 where she set up a rest, refreshment and nursing post for troops near Sebastopol and also went out on to the battlefields to tend the wounded. The campaign for a permanent memorial of Mary Seacole in London, led by Clive Soley, was launched in November 2003. It is supported by the Jamaican High Commission and the High Commissioner is one of its patrons.