Stallone’s Rocky statue will be on top of the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps all month

For the first time in three decades, the Rocky statue is at the top of the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

On Tuesday, a second casting, owned by Sylvester Stallone, was unveiled atop the museum steps. It will remain on loan there through Dec. 31.

The unveiling of the statue occurred on the city’s second annual Rocky Day, which coincides with the 48th anniversary of the original film’s debut. It also kicked off the city’s first RockyFest, a week of activities centered on the Rocky franchise, from movie marathons to happy hours.

The sculptor of the statue, A. Thomas Schomberg of Palm Springs, Calif., was on hand for the unveiling, which took place in the same spot where the fictional mayor in Rocky III dedicates the statue in the film as “a celebration of the indomitable spirit of man.”

The sculpture is a symbol “that it’s better to have fought the good fight and lose than not to fight at all,” Schomberg said, crediting Stallone and Philly for making it possible.

“We can all remember Rocky one. He comes up here in his gray sweats and he’s dancing around in those fabulous Converse shoes and he turns around and he looks at that. Look at that!” Schomberg said, pointing to the Philly skyline. “Bam! That’s what it’s about.”

Though Stallone wasn’t in attendance at the unveiling, 125 Philadelphia schoolchildren stole the show when they ran, giggling, up the steps en masse and gathered around the statue, raising their arms in victory.

Kathryn Ott Lovell, president and CEO of the Philadelphia Visitor Center Corp., credited Sasha Suda, director and CEO of the Art Museum, for working with Stallone and his wife, Jennifer, to bring his Rocky statue to the top of the museum’s steps from their home in Florida.

“We believe there’s an inextricable link between the statue and the museum,” Suda said.

Suda’s recognition of the sculpture and its connection to the storied Art Museum have come a long way since the original was last on the steps in 1990, for the filming of Rocky V. At that time, the city’s Art Commission declined to let it stay there, writing in a report: “The quality of the piece does not merit its serious consideration on the museum grounds.”

In its four decades, the original Rocky statue has suffered almost as many blows as the fictional boxer it portrays, having been the subject of much debate about its place in art and in our city. Yet, like Rocky himself, it preserves against the odds and remains an enduring presence in Philadelphia’s landscape.

The first Rocky statue, which has lived at the base of the Art Museum steps since 2006, will remain in that location. On Tuesday, entrepreneurs (as Schomberg calls them) were still selling fake medals and offering to take tourists’ photos for donations at the original sculpture.

The second statue, which currently sits atop the Art Museum steps, was commissioned around 2006 by Robert Breitbard, who displayed it in the San Diego Hall of Champions he founded in that city’s Balboa Park (no kidding). Stallone purchased the statue at auction in 2017 for $403,657.

A third copy of the statue is owned by Schomberg and is available for purchase for $1.5 million.

“This statue represents everything that the Rocky films stand for: resilience, heart, and the unbreakable bond between Rocky and the people of Philadelphia,” Stallone said in a news release. “It’s a gift to my fans who have supported me and the Rocky story for the last 48 years, and I’m thrilled to be able to bring this special moment to life in the very city that made it all possible.”

Whether the Rocky movies are your cup of raw eggs or not, the films are inextricably linked to Philadelphia. Even if you’ve never seen a Rocky movie, most people know what to do when they see the Art Museum steps and what pose to make when they stand with the sculpture for a photo.

The original statue has been the subject of petitions, hearings, a symposium, countless editorials in The Inquirer and the Daily News, tattoos, T-shirts, and a six-part podcast on WHYY.

“I never dreamed it would be quite like it is,” Schomberg said in an interview last week.

A figurative realist skilled at capturing athletes in motion, Schomberg was exhibiting his work at a gallery at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in the late 1970s when Stallone bought some of his boxing sculptures. The two never met, but when Schomberg was looking for someone to fund a statue he wanted to create to honor members of the U.S. Olympic men’s boxing team who were killed in a 1980 plane crash in Poland, his wife of 50 years, Cynthia, who is also his agent, reached out to their famous client.

Stallone wasn’t interested in funding the project but asked if he could commission Schomberg to do a statue of him as Rocky for the forthcoming third film in the franchise.

(The Schombergs eventually found a patron, and there are now versions of the sculpture, Down but not Out … Lost but not Forgotten, at the U.S. Olympic training center in Colorado Springs, in Poland, and in the private collection of the benefactor.)

“I was in from day one. We didn’t have very much money and I knew this would give me a lot of exposure,” Schomberg said.

Knowing he wouldn’t be able to get Stallone to his Colorado studio for some time, Schomberg created a life mask of Stallone’s face and took photographs of him training. Schomberg knew the pose he wanted his sculpture to take from the start — with Rocky’s fists raised above his head in victory.

“The arms are very delicate. You can’t make them too wide or it looks like Superman, and you can’t make them too short or it looks like he’s under arrest,” Schomberg said. “It’s a real delicate balance.”

For artistic inspiration, Schomberg looked to the Apollo Belvedere, a Roman copy of a Greek statue of Apollo that’s at the Vatican Museums. He sculpted Rocky’s body as if he was a heavyweight, but when Stallone came to approve a 28-inch model, he told Schomberg the body was too heavy.

“I took the biggest knife I had in my studio and I slashed off three or four months of modeling to get the weight down,” Schomberg said. “Some people may say it’s a little more cartoonish, but if anybody says that, you take a look at what Stallone looked like back then. I had to have him strip down to his waist. Stallone was in absolutely incredible condition.”

After that session, Schomberg said, is when “Rocky started to take on Rocky.”

“I started to make a statue of Rocky Balboa that looks like Sylvester Stallone, not Sylvester Stallone as Rocky,” he said.

The entire process took about a year and Schomberg was on set when the statue arrived in Philly.

“The only delay we had was the boom crane we hired to come into Philadelphia to move the statue from the storage to the top of the steps. Wouldn’t you believe it … they got stuck on the Parkway at a wreck,” Schomberg said.

Almost immediately after filming, the 8-foot, 6-inch, 1,500-pound bronze statue became the subject of controversy. Stallone wanted it to stay at the top of the Art Museum steps, but the Art Commission voted against it. Over the years, some in Philly’s art world derided the statue as a “caricature,” “out of proportion,” and simply “an adequate movie prop” (ouch!).

“I know what people have said, the art community perhaps,” Schomberg said. “I absolutely understand the responsibility of the Philadelphia Museum of Art is to exhibit the great masterpieces for the people of Philadelphia, and boy, do you have some.”

A permanent location for the piece wasn’t approved when filming wrapped in 1981, so the statue was taken back to Los Angeles. That prompted Arthur Gorman, a Kensington cabdriver, and Nikol Bird, a 9-year-old Lawndale girl, to start petitions to bring it back to Philly.

City Council agreed to accept the statue and it was exhibited, temporarily, at the top of the steps before it was it was placed in what was to be its permanent home outside the Spectrum at the stadium complex in South Philly.

In 1990, the statue was brought back to the museum for the filming of Rocky V, which reignited debate about whether it should remain there. It was returned to the stadium complex, but after the debate reignited yet again in 2006, the year Rocky Balboa was released, the city decided to place it at the bottom of the Art Museum steps, where it’s remained since.

The statue’s placement and artistic merit weren’t the only controversies that surrounded it. A fictional white boxer getting a statue placed prominently in the city while so many Black Philly boxers, like the legendary Joe Frazier, did not have one sparked — and continues to spark — debate about who and what gets memorialized in public art. Frazier didn’t get his own statue in Philly until 2015, four years after his death, and there’s been little debate about its placement at the stadium complex.

Schomberg is sympathetic to that criticism. During his visit to Philly this week, he said, he hopes to visit the Frazier statue.

“Joe Frazier is a fact, a reality. He’s a truth. He lived,” Schomberg said. “Rocky is that myth, that story, that inspiration.”

Over the decades, Schomberg said, he has heard from many people who have reached out to tell him how his statue inspired them.

“I didn’t know how important Rocky was going to be, but I did start to have an idea when a woman calls me up and says, ‘Can I have a photograph of your Rocky statue?’” Schomberg said. “She was suffering from terminal brain cancer, and she put that photograph on her refrigerator door, and every time she went to the fridge it reminded her to preserve and to keep fighting.”

Schomberg also had members of an Army unit ask if they could use the statue as their mascot. Months later he received an American flag from the unit and a picture of that flag hanging from Saddam Hussein’s palace in Iraq. And once, when Schomberg put a bag with one of the small models of his statue through the X-ray machine at an airport, a TSA agent started whistling “Gonna Fly Now,” the theme from the original Rocky.

The small models of the statue, which are marketed by Schomberg’s daughter, Robin, and co-licensed by MGM, sell online for $165 for a 12-inch resin, $2,100 for a 12-inch bronze, and $4,800 for a 20-inch bronze. The family has sold more than 6,000 of the resins to people in more than 60 countries.

Schomberg — a prolific artist now in his 80s with works at the National Museum of Sport in Indianapolis; the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Va.; and the Astrodome, the Superdome, and Yankee Stadium — still spends every day working in his studio.

Like Philadelphia, Schomberg’s story is forever linked with the Rocky statue. He said seeing the second casting again at the top of the steps, where it stood in Rocky III, was like coming full circle.

“I just hoped I would always at least be remembered a bit,” he said. “Philadelphia has fabulous artwork, and I hope Rocky always has a little place in it.”