Few public symbols in Philadelphia are as instantly recognizable, debated, photographed, and deeply felt as the Rocky statue. It is a landmark, a movie relic, a civic touchstone, and for many visitors, a required stop on any trip to the city. Now the Rocky statue will temporarily leave its familiar place at the bottom of the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps and head inside the museum itself. On Wednesday, March 25, 2026, the city’s famed Rocky statue, created by A. Thomas Schomberg, in 1980, will be removed from its longtime outdoor setting and transported indoors to become part of the upcoming exhibition “Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments”.
That relocation is an invitation to see the Rocky statue differently. For decades, the sculpture has existed in the public imagination as a kind of shorthand for grit, aspiration, and Philadelphia’s enduring affection for the underdog. But by moving the work inside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, even temporarily, the city and museum are giving this familiar figure a new frame. Instead of encountering the Rocky statue only as a photo opportunity or a ritual stop before the famous run up the steps, visitors will have the chance to engage with it as part of a larger cultural and artistic conversation.
Rocky Statue Enters a New Chapter at the Museum
Beginning April 25, visitors will be able to see the city’s Rocky statue inside the Philadelphia Museum of Art when “Rising Up” opens to the public. The exhibition arrives at a moment when monuments everywhere are being reconsidered, reinterpreted, and challenged. Against that backdrop, the museum is asking a pointed and fascinating question: “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?”
It is a strong question because it gets to the heart of why this object matters. The Rocky statue occupies a strange and uniquely powerful place between art, cinema, civic identity, tourism, and mythology. That tension is exactly what makes it worth revisiting now. The exhibition promises to respond to that central question while exploring the creation, context, and communities that orbit around Philadelphia’s iconic Rocky statue. Philadelphians do not just admire our symbols here. We wrestle with them, reinterpret them, and keep returning to what they say about us.
Rocky Statue Anchors “Rising Up”
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: Rocky and the Making of Monuments” sounds ambitious in the right way. Rather than treating the Rocky statue as a novelty, the exhibition will offer an art history of the work, unpacking how this movie prop ultimately became a public art piece and a site of global pilgrimage.
The Rocky statue began in the orbit of popular culture, but over time, it took on a life far beyond the screen. It became part of the city’s visual vocabulary. It became a ritual for tourists and locals alike. It became, in its own improbable way, a monument. The exhibition appears designed to examine that evolution with the seriousness it deserves, while still honoring the emotional pull that has made Rocky such a beloved figure.
The scale of “Rising Up” reinforces that ambition. The show will include more than 150 works by over 50 artists and artifacts spanning more than 2,000 years. That breadth suggests that the Rocky statue will not be viewed in isolation, but as part of a much larger investigation into how monuments function across time, how meaning gets attached to them, and why societies so often rally around symbols of struggle and perseverance. Timed to align with the 50th anniversary of the Rocky film franchise, the exhibition will also examine why cultures continue to root for the underdog, that powerful figure in the collective imagination.
Rocky Statue Will Still Welcome Visitors Outside
One of the more reassuring details in all of this is that visitors will not lose the Rocky experience entirely during the transition. Sylvester Stallone’s personal Rocky statue, which he loaned to the city from his private collection, will remain located at the top of the museum steps so Philly gets to continue offering the immediate thrill of seeing Rocky on the steps, while also opening up a richer, more reflective encounter with the city’s Rocky statue inside the museum.
When “Rising Up” concludes in August, the city’s Rocky statue will not return to its old position at the bottom of the stairs. Instead, it will be permanently relocated to the top of the steps, and Stallone’s statue will be returned to him.
Philadelphia has always understood Rocky as more than fiction. He is an attitude, an emblem, and a kind of shorthand for resilience. This temporary move inside the museum, and the thoughtful exhibition built around it, offers a rare chance to look again at something we think we already know.
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