On Independence Day in 1810, the Society of the Cincinnati of Pennsylvania resolved to create a memorial to General George Washington, who had served as president of the organization from its founding until his death in 1799.

Mark di Suvero’s monumental Iroquois has a robust energy and physical presence. The abstract sculpture is formed from painted steel I-beams, which are emblematic of the artist’s use of industrial materials.

Hand-fabricated from thousands of pieces of stainless steel pipe, plate, and rods, Symbiosis is part of Roxy Paine’s “Dendroid” series.

A memorial to the French heroine, the French community in Philadelphia sought the aid of the Fairmount Park Art Association (now the Association for Public Art) to commemorate their centennial.

Around 478 BCE, Polyzalos, the Tyrant of Gela in Sicily, commissioned a statue to express his gratitude to the god Apollo for his charioteer’s victory in the Pythian Games. The cast near Philadelphia’s Museum of Art was a gift from the Greek government.

In the movie “Rocky III” (1982), a massive statue of Philadelphia fighter Rocky Balboa, arms raised in triumph, is unveiled in the courtyard of the Museum of Art. In real life, actor Sylvester Stallone presented the statue to the City of Philadelphia.

The Mounted Amazon Attacked by a Panther was the work of German sculptor August Kiss. Caught in the midst of the attack, the figures convey the violence and emotional tension of the moment.

The original Lion Fighter sits as a companion piece to August Kiss’s Mounted Amazon Attacked by a Panther on the steps of the Altes Museum in Berlin. Philadelphia’s cast was moved to the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1929, where – as in Berlin – it accompanies a bronze cast of the Amazon.

Carl Paul Jennewein was a classical sculptor who was particularly interested in combining sculpture with architecture. His sculptures for the north pediment of the Philadelphia Museum of Art draw their content and technique from ancient Greece.

In 1952, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s purchase of the Prometheus cast represented the institution’s largest payment for work by a living sculptor.

“Mad Anthony” Wayne, Pennsylvania’s foremost military hero of the Revolutionary War, led the bayonet attack on the fort of Stony Point and played a major role in the battles of Brandywine and Germantown and the siege of Yorktown.

James M. Beck, Vice-President of the Fairmount Park Art Association and a member of the United States Congress, commissioned a plaster replica of the original sculpture in D.C from which a bronze cast could be made and placed in Philadelphia.

In his will of 1890 General William M. Reilly of the Pennsylvania National Guard established a trust fund for the purpose of creating monuments to Revolutionary War heroes.

As the Fairmount Water Works expanded in the 1820s, the city’s Watering Committee decided to embellish the site with emblematic sculpture and commissioned William Rush, the foremost American sculptor of his era, for the project.

This Italian travertine marble fountain featuring four sea horses – symbols of strength and vitality – was a gift from the Italian government (Mussolini’s government) to mark the United States’ 1926 Sesquicentennial.

A labrador black granite puma by Lithuanian artist William Zorach sits in the Azalea Garden behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art.