Forgive me, but I can't get excited by the six entries picked to compete to top the fourth plinth from 2009 in London's Trafalgar Square.
From Emin's bizarre meerkats to Gormley's strange and possibly unworkable proposal, I cannot understand why it is felt that contemporary art works well on a pedestal fit for honouring a historical great.
But the announcement of the shortlist last month got me curious about Trafalgar Square's history. Or rather its hidden history.
Visible but easily missed at the base of Nelson's column is an African sailor fighting in one of the Admiral's battles. Harder to find is information about Bill Richmond.
Richmond was born into slavery in the US and came to England in 1777 as a "servant" to the Duke of Northumberland. He became a boxing champion and was honoured at George IV's coronation. When he retired from the ring in 1818, he set up a boxing academy in Trafalgar Square, said to be on the site where Nelson's column now stands.
The gym was razed to the ground - Richmond had died by then and presumably the gym was no longer operating - to make way for the granite column in 1843.
Richmond's portrait now hangs in London's National Portrait Gallery, but his full story remains largely ignored.
There were about 20,000 people of African descent in Georgian London and I hope the contributions of people such as Ignatius Sancho, the Man of Letters and a shopkeeper, and the writer Olaudah Equiano, are well known to readers by now.
So many names - Florence Nightingale, William Wilberforce, William Shakespeare - have been put forward to be the permanent fixture on the fourth plinth. I would also suggest Mary Seacole, the Crimean War heroine.
But I believe all been discounted - along with the previous frontrunner Nelson Mandela (his chances were ended by Westminster City Council) - because choosing an individual is so controversial.
The problems of picking one over another are too easily foreseen. So instead, we have a competition to find a work of conceptual art. Now that's what I call politically correct.
From Emin's bizarre meerkats to Gormley's strange and possibly unworkable proposal, I cannot understand why it is felt that contemporary art works well on a pedestal fit for honouring a historical great.
But the announcement of the shortlist last month got me curious about Trafalgar Square's history. Or rather its hidden history.
Visible but easily missed at the base of Nelson's column is an African sailor fighting in one of the Admiral's battles. Harder to find is information about Bill Richmond.
Richmond was born into slavery in the US and came to England in 1777 as a "servant" to the Duke of Northumberland. He became a boxing champion and was honoured at George IV's coronation. When he retired from the ring in 1818, he set up a boxing academy in Trafalgar Square, said to be on the site where Nelson's column now stands.
The gym was razed to the ground - Richmond had died by then and presumably the gym was no longer operating - to make way for the granite column in 1843.
Richmond's portrait now hangs in London's National Portrait Gallery, but his full story remains largely ignored.
There were about 20,000 people of African descent in Georgian London and I hope the contributions of people such as Ignatius Sancho, the Man of Letters and a shopkeeper, and the writer Olaudah Equiano, are well known to readers by now.
So many names - Florence Nightingale, William Wilberforce, William Shakespeare - have been put forward to be the permanent fixture on the fourth plinth. I would also suggest Mary Seacole, the Crimean War heroine.
But I believe all been discounted - along with the previous frontrunner Nelson Mandela (his chances were ended by Westminster City Council) - because choosing an individual is so controversial.
The problems of picking one over another are too easily foreseen. So instead, we have a competition to find a work of conceptual art. Now that's what I call politically correct.
