Rocky’s Bronze Shadow: Philly Museum Explores Why We Build Monuments

A statue of Sylvester Stallone’s fictional boxer, Rocky Balboa, stands at the center of a new exhibition that asks a deceptively simple question: why do certain figures get cast in bronze and celebrated for generations? Opening this weekend at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments” traces two thousand years of boxing and celebrity, using the 1982 film prop as its anchor.

Perched on the museum’s famous steps, the statue draws an estimated four million visitors each year—more than the Liberty Bell. Curator Paul Farber, co-founder of the public art nonprofit Monument Lab, admits he once took the statue for granted. “No matter what time of day or time of year there’s a queue,” he told ArtNews. “It’s a cultural meeting ground. A site of global pilgrimage for people finding a way through pain and difficulty. He’s the patron saint of the underdog.”

But Farber also notes the irony: “The most mythical Philadelphian is a white boxer who never lived, while there are many Black Philadelphia boxers who were major members of their community.” The exhibition, timed to the Rocky franchise’s 50th anniversary, includes ancient Hellenistic sculptures, 19th-century European works, portraits of Jack Johnson, and pieces by Warhol, Basquiat, and Ligon. It asks why millions still flock to a movie prop—and what that says about the monuments we choose to keep.

Stallone himself left the curator a series of voicemails describing the museum steps as “like a magical area, an intellectual bastion I would only look at from afar.” He commissioned the bronze from Colorado sculptor A. Thomas Schomberg, who still wrestles with whether his creation is art or a prop. “That question haunted me,” Farber said. “They could have asked for a styrofoam prop. But he worked with an artist who works in bronze.”