Heh! That could, happily perhaps, be taken to symbolise something about being able to muffle voices, for a while, but the music lives on...
I could put names to almost every statue in every major Scottish town, and know at least something about any historical personality thus represented and commemorated. However, I do recognise that this is indeed unusual now and proceeds from a personal interest rather than the kind of "Cultural Capital" which could formerly be expected of any educated person; what's worse is the widespread attitude of indifference now so often encountered. One time, some forty years back it would have to be, and during a break for a flask of tea and a wee roll-up, I was recounting to three fellow "casual" labourers something-or-other amusing, or surprising, about Scotland, or Europe maybe, in the eighteenth century. The oldest - in his thirties or forties and therefore older than I, and now, I think, wiser - said indulgently, with a look of amused pity, "Professor, what you dinnae realise is, naebody's interested in that sortay thing".
True that the current explosion of interest in certain statues has been both encouraged and, it seems, steered by media attention. Unfortunate that a likely consequence of attention being so concentrated on that issue is, once a few tons of bronze and marble have been tumbled in various locations, and some politically expedient legislation hurriedly enacted, institutions like certain banks, insurance companies, auction-houses and even churches will continue quietly to do business without much attention, if any, having being turned to the forensic investigation of their "links to Slavery and the Slave Trade". Relevant to the Stately Homes of England too, of course.