I am in Philadelphia for a day, before I fly home this evening. Typically I would be writing about an art epiphany at a museum at this point, as that’s what I do when I visit cities. I go to museums and have art epiphanies. I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art expecting to have another one. Instead I stumbled upon an art culture war.
Apparently, what the Philadelphia Museum of Art is most famous for is the 72 steps that Rocky Balboa bounded up in the movie. Tourists come to run up those stairs today and, reaching the top, thrust both arms overhead in that championship winner’s mode. You won’t have to wait five minutes at those steps before you’ll see someone doing exactly that.
There is a statue. It was a movie prop in the third Rocky film. It’s an 8 foot tall Rocky Baboa, with arms raised overhead. The city wanted to put it at the art museum. The art museum huffed and fumed. "This isn’t art! Don’t disgrace our hallowed grounds with a movie prop!"
Which started the kind of class warfare fight this city thrives on. The statue is headed to the museum anyway, in a grove to the left of the base of the stairs. It arrived at the museum just as I did.
Rocky arrived on his back, his gloved hands wrapped in mover’s blankets and his neck nestled on a rigid foam pillow. His arrival caused a stir and drew a crowd. There were already three news trucks parked at the base of the stairs (there would be six within the hour), and a small herd of reporters and photographers. The moving crew took turns taking pictures of themselves, with their phones, in front of the truck, arms raised. A kid came up. "I’m a champion! I ran the stairs!" and stood in front of the statue, arms up in the air. A pile of tourists poured out of a van and surrounded the statue. "We’re from Greece, we’re flying back today. Did you know that Philadelphia is named for a Greek city?" Television reporters with microphone, tailed by cameramen, darted from person to person for reaction interviews.
"Who are you shooting for," the woman next to me asked. One benefit of carrying the camera I carry is that I can walk into any media scrum unharassed. "Oh, I’m just a tourist from Seattle." She was the AP reporter who started all this business, at least as a national story, and she started writing down what I had to say, which was, "I adore that this kerfuffle is the most important thing going on in this city. It’s a harmless folly where everyone, the cultural elite and the working class masses, can feel smug and superior."
I imagine something of the sort happened a century ago when some bronze horse and rider went up on a plynth nearby. "What, him? He doesn’t deserve a statue!" Back then, however, three news helicopters didn’t cover every moment of the installation. The Rocky statue, bad art though it may be (it’s something in the mold of a Jeff Koon piece without the irony), is going to become an immediate and beloved Philadelphia icon. Good for them.
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