PHILADELPHIA – The Philadelphia Museum of Art has moved the bronze Rocky Balboa statue indoors, ending decades of institutional tension over the popular symbol’s public placement. The statue, depicting the fictional boxer with arms raised in victory, had long drawn visitors from around the world to the museum’s steps, becoming a point of pilgrimage for millions.
The museum previously fought to have the statue removed after it was left on the steps following the filming of the Rocky movies. It was later relocated to South Philadelphia before returning to the bottom of the steps in 2006. The city of Philadelphia, not the museum, owns the specific spot where the statue has sat for years.
Institutional Re-Contextualization
The move coincides with the opening of a new exhibition, “Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments,” which aims to re-examine how a fictional fighter became a real-world symbol. The exhibition places the statue within a broader narrative of art history and Philadelphia’s identity, a re-contextualization orchestrated by the museum.
Guest curator Paul Farber, who developed the exhibition, spent years exploring the meaning of the statue and public monuments, including through his NPR podcasts. The exhibition spans more than 2,000 years of boxing imagery, tracing what Louis Marchesano, the museum’s deputy director of curatorial affairs and conservation, described as a common theme of people responding to the body under struggle.
Marchesano stated that the museum “had — and I hate to say this, no pun intended — a rocky relationship with the statue,” adding, “It took us decades to come to terms with it. But I’m glad that we did.” He also asserted that the theme of boxing imagery is “not simply about watching two people beat each other up — it’s about endurance, internal fortitude and internal struggle,” a reinterpretation of a working-class icon.
The Cost of Elite Capture
According to the Philadelphia Visitor Center, approximately 4 million people visit the museum steps each year, a figure rivaling the nearby Liberty Bell in annual foot traffic. These visitors, described as coming “from around the world,” continue to make the climb, demonstrating the statue’s widespread popular appeal that the institution initially resisted.
Among the global visitors cited were David Muller, a wrestling coach from France, who said Balboa’s trials and travails are “good for the next generation,” and that the movie “Rocky” is “important for the mind of sport and the mind of life.” Kate Tarchalska, who traveled from Poland with family, stated, “He was my hero when I was younger,” and, “And now I am so glad I could be in the same spot as him.” Suraj Kumar, visiting from St. Louis and originally from Bengaluru, India, photographed the statue to share with his father, who introduced him to the films.
One gallery within the exhibition places Rocky in the “global boxing fever of the 1970s,” featuring works by artists such as Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Andy Warhol. Marchesano noted that in the 1970s, “we knew minute by minute who the heavyweight champion of the world was,” and that these artists, like Sylvester Stallone in “Rocky,” were “responding to that global frenzy,” further embedding a specific American cultural symbol into a universalist framework.
Permanent Re-Assignment
When the exhibition concludes in August, the Rocky statue currently inside will be moved to a permanent home at the top of the museum’s steps, a location it has never officially held. The statue that has long occupied the public space at the bottom of the steps remains on loan from Sylvester Stallone. That long-standing public spot will not remain empty, as a statue of Joe Frazier is slated to replace it, marking a definitive shift in the public iconography curated by the museum.