In the popular zeitgeist the “Rocky Statue” is right at the top of the list of attractions in Philadelphia. Who doesn’t want to get their picture taken with a statue of a fictional character portrayed by Sylvester Stallone? I mean, come on, once you get a picture standing in the middle of the “Tango & Cash” tryptich or with Rambo’s wax figure in Mme Tissaud’s place, why wouldn’t you want to complete the set? Snark aside, though, let’s reframe the question as posed to us by our Lyft driver: would you like to get out here and climb up all those stairs to get to the Rocky statue, or should I take you to the rear entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), an entrance that’s basically level-in? Discretion every time, baybeee! Besides, we weren’t interested in the outer candy shell, we wanted the sweet goodness on the inside of the building, so get us in with no muss and no fuss.
Our final point of interest during our time in Philadelphia was indeed the iconic Philadelphia Museum of Art, and we for sure took the back entrance to avoid climbing two stories-worth of elevation. This doesn’t lead to some hobbit hole entrance, it’s basically the same lobby as the front entrance, just… you know, further back. Bonus, it put us directly at the entrance to their fascinating temporary exhibition, “Boom: Art and Design in the 1940s.” It wasn’t strictly about war-time art although (naturally) that took up a lot of conceptual space. The picture on the left, for example, was an example of propaganda posters that were generated fresh, daily, by Russian artists to keep the home fires burning. Like seriously, there were hundreds of these images plastered everywhere in the cities. (This one in particular was showing up around the time that formal alliances were being announced between Russia and the English-speaking powers.) There were also numerous examples of artistically-designed scarves that were sold as fundraisers for war efforts. I’ve got an acrylic scarf with a print of Van Gogh’s “Cherry Blossoms” but some of these were just bonkers.
And speaking of Van Gogh, it was only a mild irritation to realize we hadn’t needed to make a special trip to London last year to see Sunflowers… not that London isn’t a good time, but still.
PMA is a world-class museum, something that Americans can sometimes have an inferiority complex about. All the great museums are in Europe, right? While there certainly are great museums all over Europe, for better or for worse the primary driver in the “greatness” of a museum is the money behind it, and there’ve been plenty of rich jerks in the States over the years who got bees in their bonnets to put their home cities on equal footing with the capitals of Europe. The results of such efforts are on ample display here and it’s definitely worth the visit.
