The Josiah Mason Statue

In recent years this otherwise innocuous sculpted bust has taken on a new lease of life.
Mason was a Birmingham and Victorian great — an industrialist and philanthropist whose name also lives on in the title of a local college. Taken on its own, the statue is pretty unremarkable, and probably doesn’t befit a man who did so much to establish the city in the 1800s. Mason’s face, weather-​beaten and faded into Statue of Liberty-​green, sits atop of a stone plinth which commemorates his life.
However, at various points throughout the year the statue becomes something else, decorated by locals. If the England team are in a football tournament then Josiah dons the team shirt. If it’s Christmas then he wears a Santa hat and long, white beard. At the moment the Jubilee and Olympic celebrations are there to see in glorious red, white and blue. Disrespectful to Civic greatness or not, as Mason’s meaning fades inevitably into the past the statue shows us that a work of art and its meanings are never truly fixed at a point in time. A piece and its subject are never truly owned by the original artist either, as new generations enjoy the sculpture in a new light-​hearted way.