After decades of standing outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Rocky has finally been invited in.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday morning, the statue of the fictional heavyweight champion boxer portrayed by actor Sylvester Stallone will move from near the base of the museum\u2019s steps into the building, to be a part of the \u201cRising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments\u201d exhibition<\/a> from April 25 to Aug. 2.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTimed to align with the 50th anniversary of the Rocky film franchise, the exhibition will examine why societies often root for the \u2018underdog,\u2019 a figure in our collective imagination, \u201d the exhibition description reads.<\/p>\n The exhibition will be curated by Paul Farber, director and co-founder of Monument Lab and host of WHYY\u2019s \u201cThe Statue\u201d podcast<\/a>, which details the history and issues surrounding the artwork.<\/p>\n A. Thomas Schomberg\u2019s sculpture was commissioned for \u201cRocky III\u201d in 1980. Between then and 2006, it moved around a bit before settling in its current location at street level, where it has drawn an estimated 4 million tourists each year. It\u2019s also spurred a love\/hate debate through the decades over whether it can be classified as art or embraced as a symbol of the city.<\/p>\n Those who don\u2019t feel that the movie prop should share the same hallowed halls as works by Claude Monet, Thomas Eakins or Marcel Duchamp \u2014 or who kept siding against the \u201cItalian Stallion\u201d in each of the movies \u2014 don\u2019t worry: Rocky\u2019s stay is only temporary.\u00a0<\/p>\n After the exhibition ends, the statue will go back outside and be placed permanently on top of the museum\u2019s steps<\/a>, where it was first unveiled in 1981.<\/p>\n During Wednesday morning\u2019s move, the base of the museum\u2019s steps and the area around the statue will be closed off from the public, along with street closures in effect along Spring Garden between Kelly Drive and MLK Drive.<\/p>\n A second statue, one of three made by Schomberg and on loan from Stallone himself, has been at the top of the museum steps since the first-ever RockyFest in 2024<\/a>, on loan from Stallone\u2019s personal collection. That one will remain outside over the summer and be returned to Stallone when the original is moved out of the museum.<\/p>\n There are currently three Rocky statues in the city. The third one was unveiled at Philadelphia International Airport last November and will remain a permanent fixture in Terminal A-West, between Gates 15 and 16. There\u2019s also a fourth statue in Serbia<\/a>, although that was made by a different artist.<\/p>\n