Blocking images of public statues only NOW that the local sports team used them in their logo

That's very interesting. I saw them as the same statue exactly. And so will Adobe's reviewers I imagine; they are looking for distint photos, not an art catalog, so a lot of thematically similar work may be rejected as "same". The almost identical cloud formation, a few minutes apart at most, encourages the perception.

Another point: as the statues are more modernist than classical, the reviewer will make their own call about whether they are "modern" (ie last 100 yeats) and hence likely to be protected IP. They do the same to buildings, and may be fooled by really old modern looking work, or really new classical work. But the aim is to accept only work that has IP release, or looks too old to need it, or too generic for anyone in the world to identify it. (Public or promintent work is not exempt from their scrutiny; indeed it's very complex eg the Empire State Building by day is allowed, by night is protected!)