Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments
Philadelphia Museum of Art
April 25- August 2, 2026
Reviewed by Ed Voves
Original photography by Anne Lloyd
In January 1976, the Chartoff-Winkler Production Company began on-location filming in Philadelphia of a movie devoted to boxing. With a script written by a struggling young actor, Sylvester Stallone, the film was a big-screen adaptation of a familiar Hollywood genre, the "underdog" hero who battles the odds.
Using the recently-invented "steady-cam" motion picture camera, the unforgettable run of Rocky Balboa, a "bum from the neighborhood", up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art was recorded. It would prove to be a moment of movie magic.
There was not much attention paid to the film production during the winter/spring months of 1976. It was the year of the Bicentennial. Americans were busy preparing for the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of the United States.
Rocky, when it was released by United Artists in December 1976, was a popular hit and a critical success. Fifty years on, this Academy Award-winning movie, along with its five sequels and the spin-off Creed series, is one of the most universally embraced films in cinematic history.
The impact of Rocky is so great that the Philadelphia Museum of Art is currently mounting an exhibition using the film as a "take-off" point. This is a significant point to note, as there is very little in Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments by way of memorabilia from the film - with one very powerful exception.
The statue has been the subject of both adulation and criticism. An initial proposal for the statue to remain at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), following Rocky III, was rejected. But the bronze Rocky eventually made its way back to a street-level sanctuary on the side of the museum, not - initially - the steps. A constant stream of visitors over the years turned it into a veritable pilgrimage site.
Now the once-spurned movie "prop" is inside the museum. Outside, at the top of the "Rocky Steps" is a second version, owned by Sylvester Stallone and on loan to the PMA.
Thus, people can see the Rocky "twins" and still run-up the steps, raising their arms to the sky like champions. And they do - an estimated 4 million per year, rivaling the number of visitors to the Statue of Liberty.
The Rocky experience is obviously a response to some primal human need or compulsion. Indeed, mythic is not too strong a word to use in relation to the Rocky phenomenon. This is especially true when the statue is contrasted with the images of Greek gods and goddesses, looming above on the pediment of the museum.
The current exhibition at the PMA seeks to address the reason why Rocky has struck such a chord.
Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments investigates the way that the sport of boxing has influenced and inspired popular conceptions of what it means to be a champion and how society regards, rewards or ignores such heroics.
Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments is organized by a guest curator, Paul Farber, director and co-founder of Monument Lab. This Philadelphia-based organization is dedicated to re-imagining public spaces and the statues and monuments which are placed there In order to promote social justice and community well-being.
As its title proclaims, the Rocky-inspired exhibition is dedicated to "rising up." This process, ironically, involves many a "knock out." Surveying the sport of boxing, Farber shows how marginalized ethnic groups have won respect due to the courage, grit and fighting skills of heroes from their ranks.
A selection of carefully-chosen art works and artifacts illustrates the long historical lineage of Rocky Balboa.
In ancient Greece, boxing entered the list of approved sports in the Olympics in 688 BC. As a result, boxers from small city-states could compete - and sometimes beat - opponents from more powerful rivals. The most famous Greek boxer was the undefeated champion, Claucis, c. 520 BC. Glaucis was a citizen of Carystus, often dominated and bullied by Athens - but not in the boxing ring!
During the late 18th and early 19th century, boxing as we know it today was largely created in England. The sport was dominated by Daniel Mendoza (1764-1836), a highly-skilled Jewish fighter, and Tom Molineaux (1784-1818) a rugged African-American boxer. Molineaux fought a highly publicized bout against the reigning champion, Tom Cribb, losing in what many regarded as a "rigged" encounter. But he gained widespread respect, serving as the inspiration for one of the Staffordshire figurines shown below.
Closer to our era is Joe Louis (1914-1981). The "Brown Bomber" (as Louis was called) is represented in the exhibition by an unsettling portrait sculpture by Ruth Yates. Louis, a powerful fighter with 66 wins, 3 defeats, held the heavy-weight title longer than any other boxer (1937-1949). He was also a deeply humane and generous man. The stern, emotion-drained countenance of this sculpture is almost unrecognizable compared to the photos of Louis included in the exhibition.
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Sadly, Louis became a tragic hero as well. With most of his earnings siphoned-off by dishonest managers, Louis was hounded by the IRS for unpaid taxes. As a result, he was compelled to fight long-after his prime, when two of his three defeats occurred. Eventually, the "Brown Bomber" was reduced to the humiliation of performing in the professional wrestling circuit.
The saga of Joe Louis sets the stage in Rising Up for the story of a real life "Rocky." The rise to boxing greatness of Joe Frazier and his epic duels with Muhammad Ali are brought to life with a superb array of works of art, photos and memorabilia - including Frazier's boxing gloves.
As visitors to the exhibition watch a video recording of the 1971"Fight of the Century," a charge of excitement surges through the gallery.
Joe Frazier was born in 1944 to share-cropper parents in the rural South. Just as Joe Louis sought to escape poverty and racism by joining the Great Migration to Detroit, Frazier did the same, in his case to Philadelphia.
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The similarity between these two working-class heroes, Frazier/Rocky, was deliberately underscored by Stallone in the film script, especially in the way that the blue-collar fighter was pitted against the flamboyant Apollo Creed.
Yet, nothing in fiction or fantasy could ever match the drama of the actual Frazier-Ali fights.
The Frazier-Ali fights were true battles, inflicting brutal physical punishment and lasting scars on both men. What began as a prize fight developed into a grudge match.
This review is not the place to re-fight the three boxing duels from the 1970's. However, the political factors which impinged upon the relationship between Frazier and Ali do require some commentary here.
Why? The stated aim of the curator of Rising Up, Paul Farber of Monument Lab, is to promote social justice. Unfortunately, it was the crusading ardor of the late 1960's-70's which helped poison the atmosphere of the Frazier-Ali fights.
Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali started-out as close friends. When Ali was stripped of his Heavyweight Boxing title in 1967 for refusing to support the Vietnam War, Frazier stood by Ali. Frazier lent Ali money to support his family and petitioned President Nixon to lift the ban and allow Ali to return to the boxing ring.
A critical incident took place during the 1968 Mexico City Olympics with a huge impact on American society at large and, indirectly, on Ali and Frazier.That year, two African American athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, raised their fists during the playing of the U.S. National Anthem. They did this to show solidarity with the Civil Rights Movement and other social activist causes.
Stunned and embittered by this verbal abuse, Frazier fought with exceptional determination in the first of his bouts with Ali, which he won. Ali responded. By the end of the third and last fight, in Manila in 1975, the duel between the two mighty legends of the ring had become a personal feud.
"They did not fight for the heavyweight title of the world," wrote the noted boxing authority, Jerry Izenberg in 1975. "The way they fought, they were fighting for the championship of each other."
Sadly, there was no reconciliation between Frazier and Ali, though Ali did attend Frazier's funeral in 2011. But the great lesson to be drawn from their rivalry is not a negative one. Ultimately, it is a matter of "rising up."
At the press preview for Rising Up, Joe Frazier's daughter, Jacqui Frazier-Lyde, spoke movingly about her father, who demonstrated how to "embrace the champion in you."
Words to live by. "Embrace the champion in you."
Words to exclaim and exult! Race-up the "Rocky" steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, raise your arms to the sky and let your heart and soul arise.
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Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved
Original photography, copyright of Anne
Lloyd
Introductory Image: Anne Lloyd, Photo (2025) A "Rocky" Moment at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Anne Lloyd,
Photos (1976, 2020, 2024, 2025, 2026) Photographs of the "Rocky" steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and visitors doing the "Rocky" run.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026)The Rocky statue by A. Thomas Schomberg, 1980. Bronze: 8' 6'' x 4' x 2' (base: 1' 6" x 3' 6" x 3' 6") Gift of Sylvester Stallone to the City of Philadelphia.
Ed Voves, Photo (2026) Paul Farber of Monument Lab, with Jacqui Frazier-Lyde, daughter of Joe Frazier at the press preview for Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Mahroni Young's Right to the Jaw, 1926-27. Roman Bronze Works. Bronze: 15 x 21 1/4 x 10 1/8 inches (38.1 x 54 x 25.7 cm) (overall, including base) Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Neck Amphora from ancient Greece, 510-490 BC. Ceramic Black Figure vessel: 29.5 x 18.5 x 17 cm. Collection of the University of Pennsylvania Museum.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Figures of Boxers, Tom Molineaux and Tom Cribb, c. 1815. Staffordshire potteries, England. Pearlglazed earthenware with overglaze painted decoration. Collection of the Winterthur Museum, Delaware.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Ruth Yates's Joe Louis,1940. Vermont marble sculpture: 18 5/16 x 13 x 13 3/8 inches (46.5 x 33 x 34 cm) Wolfsonian-FIU, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. collection.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Joe Frazier's Boxing Gloves, made by Everlast c. 1970. Red leather: 12 (length) x 7 (width) x 5.5 (depth) x 19 (circumference) inches. Atwater Kent Collection, Drexel University.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Gallery view of the Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monument exhibition, showing a large format photograph by Larry Morris, New York Times, of the March 8, 1971 boxing match between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Six Headshots of Joe Frazier. Photographer unknown. Private Collection of Joe Hand III.
Anne Lloyd,
Photo (2026) Detail of the Madison Square Garden poster for the March 8, 1971 boxing match between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali. Original artwork by LeRoy Neimann.
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