{"id":173449,"date":"2026-04-23T02:19:39","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T02:19:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/173449\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T02:19:39","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T02:19:39","slug":"the-rocky-statues-long-road-to-acceptance-inside-the-art-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/173449\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rocky statue\u2019s long road to acceptance inside the Art Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends. Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After standing outside of the Philadelphia Museum of Art for 20 years, the statue of Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa, the undisputed most famous fictional Philadelphian, has finally been invited into the building<\/a> it has cast a shadow over since 1981.<\/p>\n

Given the rocky \u2014 sorry, bumpy \u2014 relationship between the two since the statue first arrived, many never thought this line of acceptance would ever be crossed, including those who extended the invitation.<\/p>\n

\u201cNever in a million years did I think that this statue was going to be inside the museum. And I think a lot of other people agree with me,\u201d said Louis Marchesano, the museum\u2019s deputy director of curatorial affairs and conservation.<\/p>\n

The Rocky statue is not coming to just gaze upon all the works that critics have deemed more worthy of artistic consideration, including Marcel Duchamp\u2019s \u201cFountain.\u201d<\/a> It\u2019s the main component of the \u201cRising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments<\/a>\u201d exhibition, running from April 25 to Aug. 2.<\/p>\n

So what can a sculpture that started out as a movie prop for \u201cRocky III\u201d tell us about our perceptions of public monuments? Quite a lot, says Paul Farber, director and co-founder of Monument Lab<\/a> and the exhibition\u2019s guest curator \u2014 particularly about ourselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my hopes is that the museum and the statue not only see each other, but all of the people who have made meaning within and across those public spaces, receive spotlight and love,\u201d Farber said. \u201cI\u2019m very interested in the statue, but I\u2019m even more interested in the people. People who line up for the statue to take a picture with it. People who have engagement and critiques of it. People who shine a light on other boxers or other monumental figures.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018You have to give Schomberg his due\u2019<\/p>\n

Stallone obviously intended the statue to live on as more than a movie prop when he commissioned artist A. Thomas Schomberg to cast it in bronze \u2014 along with two others versions of the statue currently residing at the top of the museum steps and in Philadelphia International Airport<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Marchesano argues that the debate over whether the piece is art or not is no longer relevant, especially given its popularity today.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever you think about the statue one way or the other in terms of its quality, in terms of whether or not it\u2019s a work of art, whatever you think about that, you have to give Schomberg his due,\u201d he said. \u201cHe succeeded beyond, I think, even his wildest imagination, that four million people a year, many of whom have never seen a Rocky movie and who don\u2019t know who Sylvester Stallone is, visit that statue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"A. Thomas Schomberg works on the Rocky statue. (Photo courtesy of Schomberg Studios)<\/p>\n

Farber explored how the statue transformed from a nuisance leftover from filming into a top tourist attraction for the city in WHYY\u2019s \u201cThe Statue\u201d podcast<\/a>, which Marchesano credits with changing the museum\u2019s \u201cfraught relationship\u201d with Rocky.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the podcast, Farber recalled how his mother shamed him into paying attention to the statue, and Marchesano said the podcast had a similar effect on him and others in the museum.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been here since 2019 and I saw those lines every single day, no matter the weather,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it got me to think in the same way \u2014 Paul\u2019s mother indirectly shamed us \u2014 into asking the same question: Why do so many people visit that?\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the central question of the exhibition, and all of the accompanying galleries in the show are an attempt to answer that question through artworks, artifacts and stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Rocky statue is part of the show, but even when you\u2019ll walk through it, you\u2019re going to go through thousands of years of history of monuments told through the framework of boxing locally, nationally, internationally across time,\u201d Farber said.<\/p>\n

Working with the lab\u2019s definition of monuments as \u201cstatements of power and presence in public,\u201d the exhibition\u2019s works range from around 400 BCE to Mural Arts works currently up today<\/a>. Farber said that the depictions range from \u201ccelebrated figure, a social outcast, and underdog in the most fundamental senses, and occupies a really important advantage on power and humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cNeck Amphora\u201d (510-490 BCE) by an unkonwn artist.(Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art)<\/p>\n

Pieces range from statues, poems and photos to promotional posters, magazine covers and even the Steadicam test footage that Garrett Brown took of his wife running up the museum steps before he recorded Stallone\u2019s now-iconic scene in the first Rocky movie.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Along with depictions of Stallone, real boxers like Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali and Elizabeth \u201cPink Panther\u201d Monge are highlighted. Philly boxers and locations like Bernard Hopkins, Joe Louis and the Blue Horizon gym<\/a> \u2014 their legacies often overshadowed by Rocky \u2014 are highlighted.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cBlue Horizon, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 1990\u201d (1990) by Larry Fink. (Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art)<\/p>\n

Marchesano said that the statue was intentionally not the first thing people see. Instead, they first encounter the earliest depictions of the sport, then its cultural heyday and blending into popular culture in the 1970s, and next its power and place in Philadelphia. All the while, museum-goers gradually get greater sightlines of the Rocky statue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After guests encounter the Rocky statue, they approach contemporary works that portray boxing and its metaphors in different perspectives. One of these is \u201cResilience of the 20%<\/a>,\u201d a bronze casting of a clay block after Canadian performance artist Cassils \u201cfought\u201d it, in a statement on the resilience of queer communities under the prevalent violence they face.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The exhibition includes a map of Philly\u2019s iconic boxing locations, with the ability to adjust for when the statue of Joe Frazier moves<\/a> from the South Philly Sports Complex to the spot where the Rocky Statue previously stood. Farber said that \u201cSmokin\u2019 Joe\u201d, who actually did the museum step running and frozen meat punching that Rocky later emulated, is as much a protagonist of the exhibition as the Italian Stallion and he hopes the show inspires line for photos with Frazier\u2019s statue and a revitalization of his North Philly gym<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cSmokin Joe Frazier at weigh-in at the Philippine Coliseum\u201d (1975) by Leroy Neiman. (Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art)<\/p>\n

Farber said that after bringing people inside the museum, the exhibition\u2019s goal is to invite interest back to the outside world where these pieces exist and gain their meaning. This includes the museum \u2014 or Rocky\u2019s \u2014 steps, a common protest sight for Philadelphians that Farber described as \u201cour people\u2019s pedestal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019m really interested to learn throughout the show is not just how people engage the show from as many walks of life, but also how it speaks to what is already an incredibly vibrant and meaningful and layered public space right outside of the museum\u2019s front door,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

So, where does this rank among the most \u201cPhilly\u201d exhibitions the museum has ever had? Marchesano felt that 2021\u2019s \u201cNew Grit: Art & Philly Now\u201d<\/a> was the only one that rivals it. He also pointed out the irony that it can simultaneously be seen as Philly and not Philly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe universal values that are embedded in that statue, some of them you would absolutely see as Philadelphia, like struggle and grit,\u201d he said, laughing. \u201cBut the way that the whole world comes to the statue \u2026 makes Philadelphia, in a way, kind of the center of the world, because of the Rocky statue.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends. Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today. After standing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4877,564,94,32383,69,16707,71,12634,70,2397,17586,30060],"class_list":{"0":"post-173449","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-featured","10":"tag-history","11":"tag-monument-lab","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-philadelphia-art-museum","14":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","15":"tag-philadelphia-museum-of-art","16":"tag-philadelphia-news","17":"tag-rocky","18":"tag-rocky-statue","19":"tag-rocky-steps"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}