Barye’s bronze symbolizes the lion of monarchy crushing the evil serpent and is the first sculpture installed in Rittenhouse Square.
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.
Of the many sculptures at the Philadelphia Zoo, The Dying Lioness is one of the best known. The model for the sculpture won first prize at the Vienna International Exhibition in 1873.
Learn more about the Association for Public Art unique history with aPA’s full timeline, which details more than 140 years of the organization’s work to commission, preserve, interpret, and promote public art in 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 project originated in 1959, when the Fairmount Park Art Association (now the Association for Public Art) invited a group of sculptors to submit designs for a work to be placed in the northern section of the zoo
A leading figure at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Joseph Leidy (1823-1891) is known as the “father of American vertebrate paleontology,” and is recognized as the foremost American anatomist of his time.
“The Lioness” was exhibited in the French Salon of 1886 before its acquisition by the Fairmount Park Art Association (now the Association for Public Art).
Charles Darwin called Alexander von Humboldt “the greatest scientific traveler who ever lived.” This memorial was among the very first statues erected in Fairmount Park.
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.