Statues are pretty much still artefacts of the stone age.
Today’s invention is to create civic statues of much respected people so that they incorporate some robotic components.
This would allow a repertoire of small movements to replicate some of the physical characteristics of the individual in question. These might be triggered by people passing by or on detecting certain spoken phrases.
No need for an all-singing, all-dancing, uncanny-valley replica, but enough to preserve more of the memory of the real person than marble or bronze can achieve.
