In a moment of reckoning and reimagining for monuments, why do millions of people from around the world visit the Rocky statue by the steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art?Now through August 2nd, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is moving the Rocky statute inside the museum's four walls for an extended boxing exhibit called "Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments." The exhibit is organized by with collaboration from Monument Lab.

 

"Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments" traces more than two millennia of artists’ engagement with boxing and celebrity. Ancient sculptures, nineteenth-century European works, and images from the golden age of boxing in the United States, together with contemporary art, reveal how fighters have been shaped as public figures. More recently, artists including Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Glenn Ligon, Hank Willis Thomas, and Lisa Brice revisit this history through the lens of race, gender, and celebrity. These works illuminate what visitors project onto the Rocky statue: ideals of the underdog—perseverance, spirit, and grit—values shaped by the history of the sport and by lived struggle and aspiration.

 

Organized by guest curator Paul Farber, Director and Co-Founder of Monument Lab and host of the acclaimed podcast The Statue from NPR/WHYY, "Rising Up" will offer an art history of the Rocky statue, unpacking how this movie prop ultimately turned into a public art piece and site of global pilgrimage. The exhibition will showcase over 150 works by more than 50 artists. The accompanying publication, edited by Farber, includes contributions from celebrated Philadelphia artist Alex Da Corte, former Philadelphia Eagle and Super Bowl champion Malcolm Jenkins, and noted film critic Carrie Rickey.