(SOUNDBITE OF BILL CONTI SONG, "GONNA FLY NOW")
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
A new exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art features one of America's most popular monuments, the statue of fictional movie hero, Rocky Balboa. Reporter Justin Kramon takes us inside.
JUSTIN KRAMON, BYLINE: In late March, a small crowd gathered just outside the museum to watch a historic event.
LOUIS MARCHESANO: Hey, man, it's actually happening.
KRAMON: Right now?
MARCHESANO: Look, look, they're just moving it right now.
KRAMON: That's Louis Marchesano, deputy director of curatorial affairs. He's watching a crane hoist the 8 1/2-foot bronze Rocky statue toward the museum. The statue is modeled on Sylvester Stallone, the actor who created and played the underdog boxer Rocky in the film series, posed with his fists raised skyward. Around 4 million people visit the statue each year, about the same as the Statue of Liberty. This move is such a big deal, Marchesano explains, because until recently, the museum didn't want the statue anywhere near it. When the statue was first installed in 1982...
MARCHESANO: There was an outcry within the museum that this statue did not belong in a museum that housed one of the most important art collections in the country.
KRAMON: For years, the museum tried to have it removed. But the museum's new exhibition, Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments, reconsiders this. Paul M. Farber, the guest curator and director of a nonprofit called Monument Lab, says the exhibition asks why so many people visit the Rocky statue, as well as an unspoken question - why don't more of those people come inside the museum?
PAUL M FARBER: I wanted to bring the spirit of the outside in, but to then push the museum outward as well.
KRAMON: A few weeks later, Farber walks inside the museum to view the nearly complete exhibition. This is the music that greets you, a reimagining of the "Rocky" theme song by Justin Geller, as you enter the galleries of boxing memorabilia, like posters and old equipment, and boxing-themed works by renowned artists like Keith Haring, Kara Walker and Andy Warhol. They're all mixed together, like one unwieldy family. Farber points out the earliest work, an Etruscan figure of a boxer from around 450 BC.
FARBER: Their two arms are in the air approaching the sky, looks like a little Rocky, or maybe Rocky looks a little bit like this.
KRAMON: These galleries form a corridor toward the Rocky statue, giving historical context with works that reveal boxing as a metaphor for human grit. A number of objects related to the late Philadelphia boxer Joe Frazier, who is Black, highlight the issues of race involved in a monument to a fictional white boxer. Frazier was a heavyweight champion, the first boxer to defeat Muhammad Ali in a fight watched by 300 million people worldwide. Training by running up the Philly Museum steps? Before Rocky, it was Frazier.
FARBER: But his image is not emblazoned on tour buses and lifted up as this global symbol.
KRAMON: Finally, there's the Rocky statue. I asked Farber if it was weird to see it at a museum gallery.
FARBER: Absolutely. There's something - like, I thought he might feel like he's lonely, but actually, he's like - he's amongst friends.
KRAMON: That's the hope Farber brings to this exhibition - that people and objects that seem incompatible can talk to each other and that a monument like the Rocky statue in which so many people see their personal struggles and triumphs can encourage this dialogue.
FARBER: Monuments have the power to help us understand one another, to heal, to learn.
KRAMON: The final galleries contain boxing-inspired works by people like trans artist Cassils and Iranian photographer Newsha Tavakolian.
FARBER: One of my biggest, biggest hopes is that people see themselves in the show, no matter who they are, but they also see one another.
KRAMON: Can Rocky punch through our cultural divisions to create a shared space for so many diverse people? It's a lot to ask of a statue. For NPR News, I'm Justin Kramon in Philadelphia.
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