Sylvester Stallone is reclaiming one of his two Rocky statues from Philadelphia after a city commission vote. A second bronze sculpture by Auldwin Thomas Schomberg, which Stallone bought at auction in 2017 and loaned to the city in December 2024 for RockyFest, will be returned to the actor in 2026. Meanwhile, the original 1980 statue—currently at the foot of the Philadelphia Art Museum steps—will be moved inside the museum for the exhibition “Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments” celebrating the franchise’s 50th anniversary, then relocated to the top of the steps where it originally stood in the 1980s. A third Schomberg Rocky statue was recently unveiled at Philadelphia International Airport.
The decision matters because it resolves a public dispute over ownership and placement of an iconic pop-culture monument that has become a symbol of Philadelphia. The compromise keeps a Rocky statue on public view while allowing the museum to contextualize the work in a broader discussion about monuments, cultural memory, and public space. The episode highlights ongoing tensions between civic identity, artistic value, and private ownership of publicly beloved artworks.