With a beloved statue of Rocky Balboa being moved from the bottom of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s steps to its top, the Philadelphia Art Commission has officially selected a replacement artwork: a monument to Joe Frazier, an actual Philadelphian boxer (unlike Rocky, who is fictional).
The Frazier statue is currently exhibited outside the Sports Complex in South Philadelphia, where the monument has been located since 2015.
Before the art commission formally approved the plan on Wednesday, city officials argued that it could offer a chance for Frazier to assume greater visibility in Philadelphia, where Rocky, a character who was created for the titular film series, can hog the spotlight in the eyes of tourists.
“Relocating the Joe Frazier statue to this prominent civic and cultural space would increase public visibility for the statue, deepen educational opportunities, and create a respectful dialogue between two complementary representations of Philadelphia’s spirit: Rocky Balboa as a symbol of hard work and aspiration, and Joe Frazier as the embodiment of those values lived out in real life,” Marguerite Anglin, public art director of Creative Philadelphia, wrote in a proposal to move the work.
She continued, “This effort will thoughtfully expand the story we tell about Philadelphia, a city where the fictional idea of the ‘underdog’ and real-life achievement through perseverance can stand side by side.”
Some have argued that the plan isn’t quite so balanced, since a monument to a fictitious boxer will be placed literally and metaphorically above Frazier, whose bona fides included becoming the first boxer to defeat Muhammad Ali.
In the Philadelphia Inquirer, columnist Stephanie Farr wrote that putting the Frazier statue at the bottom of the stairs was “a bigger smack in the face than a sucker punch in the ring,” writing, “At this time, we should not be elevating fiction in Philadelphia as the federal government is attempting to erase our facts.”
Notably, Frazier is not the subject of a forthcoming Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibition. Rocky, however, gets title billing in a show about monuments opening in April.
