Philadelphia Inquirer | 05/28/2006 | Art | Yo, Diana! Rocky’s turn
Augustus St. Gaudens’ Diana at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Sozanski wants to see the Rocky statue go there instead.
Are we a little angry, Mr. Sozanski? Asking for a substitution of Rocky for Diana (see it bigger here) inside the Philadelphia Museum of Art and saying the museum could live with it if each Rocky visitor were paying the $12 admission fee is hostile beyond words.
And putting slots and a casino in the Barnes — and changing the slots’ whirling images from fruits to Renoirs and Cezannes for the sake of education — is likewise so funny I forgot to laugh.
Sheesh, maybe it’s the heat? This full dress assault on the PMA, the Barnes and the art world in general is so untempered I almost didn’t want to note it here on Artblog. But buy gum Mr. Sozanski has a big readership and I’m sure many of the readers are laughing their heads off at the ideas expressed by him in this morning’s paper.
I’d love to hear other creative ideas for placing Rocky. Here’s mine: I’d like some institution –PMA, ICA, FPAA — to commission Stephan Balkenhol to carve a wooden Rocky to be sited mid-stream in the Delaware river as if he was walking on the water. That’s a Rocky statue I could live with. Here’s a project Balkenhol did in the Thames River in London in 1992. It could work here.
