Fairmount Water Works

3rd Sculpture International was a 1949 exhibition of contemporary sculpture held inside and outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. It featured works by 250 sculptors from around the world, and ran from May 15 to September 11, 1949. The exhibition was organized by the Fairmount Park Art Association (now the Association for Public Art) under the terms of a bequest made to the Association by the late Ellen Phillips Samuel. Ellen Phillips Samuel was a member of the Fairmount Park Art Association and a supporter of many cultural activities in Philadelphia. When she died in 1913, she left the bulk of her estate in trust to the Art Association, specifying that the income be used to create a series of sculptural monuments “emblematic of the history of America.” When these funds became available upon the death of her husband in 1929, the Art Association appointed a planning committee, which decided that the Samuel Memorial should express major ideas and spiritual forces as well as chronological developments in American history. To identify sculptors, the committee organized three international exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. These Sculpture Internationals, in 1933, 1940, and 1949, brought together the works of hundreds of sculptors from the United States and abroad. The exhibitions contributed not only to the Samuel Memorial but also to the general awareness of contemporary sculpture throughout the Philadelphia area.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at Eakins Oval. The museum administers collections containing over 240,000 objects including major holdings of European, American and Asian origin. The various classes of artwork include sculpture, paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, armor, and decorative arts.The Philadelphia Museum of Art administers several annexes including the Rodin Museum, also located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, which is located across the street just north of the main building. The Perelman Building, which opened in 2007, houses more than 150,000 prints, drawings and photographs, along with 30,000 costume and textile pieces, and over 1,000 modern and contemporary design objects including furniture, ceramics and glasswork. The museum also administers the historic colonial-era houses of Mount Pleasant and Cedar Grove, both located in Fairmount Park. The main museum building and its annexes are owned by the City of Philadelphia and administered by a registered nonprofit corporation.Several special exhibitions are held in the museum every year, including touring exhibitions arranged with other museums in the United States and abroad. The museum had 437,348 visitors in 2021, making it the 65th most-visited art museum worldwide.

The 72 stone steps leading up to the entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, have become known as the "Rocky Steps" as a result of a scene from the 1976 film Rocky. Tourists often mimic Rocky's famous climb, a metaphor for an underdog or an everyman rising to a challenge. A bronze Rocky statue was briefly situated at the top of the steps for the filming of Rocky III. This statue, now located at the bottom right of the steps, is a popular photo opportunity for visitors. The top of the steps offers a commanding view of Eakins Oval, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and Philadelphia City Hall. In 2006, Rocky creator Sylvester Stallone recounted that the genesis of the iconic scene occurred when the 1976 film crew, bound by a tight budget, identified the steps one night while searching for filming locations around the city. Stallone first thought Rocky should carry his dog Butkus up the steps, but the big bull mastiff proved too heavy for the scene to work. Still, the view from the top of the stairs inspired him to reshoot the scene without the dog. In the 2006 film Rocky Balboa, Rocky lifts his dog Punchy when he reaches the top of the steps. The closing credits of Rocky Balboa show a montage of dozens of people running up the steps. This scene was one of the first uses in a major film of the Steadicam, a stabilized camera mount that allows its operator to walk and even climb steps while smoothly filming.

The Spring Garden Street Tunnel is a vehicular tunnel under the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The tunnel once carried the SEPTA Route 43 trolley.

The Philadelphia Marathon (aka the Philadelphia Independence Marathon) is an annual marathon sporting event held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on the third Sunday of November each year since 1954. The Philadelphia Marathon ranks among the top ten in the nation's largest marathons with over 30,000 runners, 60,000 spectators and 3,000 volunteers. The 30,000 runners come from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and over 42 countries. The marathon course is professionally certified at 42.195 kilometres (26.219 mi) by the Road Running Technical Council of USA Track & Field.

On 2 July 2005, a Live 8 concert was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with a densely packed audience stretched out for one mile along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The event was organized by the ONE Campaign. It was one of the first Live 8 concerts announced, as the city had played host to its Live Aid predecessor in 1985, and, until the inclusion of a concert outside Toronto, was the only city in North America to represent Live 8. It did, however, remain the only United States city to participate in the event. The event is also referred to as "Live 8 Philadelphia", "Live 8 Philly", or "Live 8 USA". Unlike other venues, no tickets were issued to control access, and Philadelphia police declined to give a crowd estimate. Presenters stated several times on stage that over one million people were at the concert. Non-organizer estimates ranged from 600,000 to 800,000 and one million to 1.5 million. Some estimates are of the number of people at the concert at any one time, while other estimates are of the total number of people on the Parkway over the course of the nearly eight hours-long event.

The Philadelphia Freedom Concert and Ball was an HIV/AIDS awareness fund raising event that was held in Philadelphia, United States, on July 4, 2005.The ball was held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art prior to the multi-act concert. Tickets were $1,000 each and included numerous celebrities, including, the orchestrator of the event, Elton John. Chefs from the city provided food and entertainment was provided by local groups. The concert itself was held outside the museum, using the stage from the Live 8 concert only a few days before. VIP tickets costing $500 allowed people to sit in 25 rows set up in front of the stage; otherwise, it was a standing only event. Over a million people attended. The concert was hosted by Wayne Brady and Bruce Vilanch and included other guests, such as Billie Jean King. Performing were Bryan Adams, Patti LaBelle, Rufus Wainwright, Peter Nero and the Philly Pops, culminating with a performance by Elton John (who was introduced by long-time friend and AIDS activist Billie Jean King). Elton opened with "The Bitch Is Back", followed by "Bennie and the Jets", "Rocket Man", "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues", "Tiny Dancer", and ended with "Philadelphia Freedom" with the Philadelphia Pops. The concert was followed by a fireworks display.

The Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building—originally the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company Building—is an annex of the Philadelphia Museum of Art containing exhibition galleries, offices, conservation labs, and the museum library. It is an Art Deco building that features cathedral-like entrances and is adorned with sculpture and gilding. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Perelman Building is located at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and Fairmount Avenue, facing the Philadelphia Museum of Art's main building across Kelly Drive.

Spring Garden Street Bridge is a highway bridge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It crosses the Schuylkill River below Fairmount Dam and connects West Philadelphia to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Benjamin Franklin Parkway. It is the fourth bridge at this location. The bridge is located at 39°57′52″N 75°11′00″W.

Benjamin Franklin Parkway, commonly abbreviated to Ben Franklin Parkway and colloquially called the Parkway, is a boulevard that runs through the cultural heart of Philadelphia. Named for founding father Benjamin Franklin, the mile-long Parkway cuts diagonally across the grid plan pattern of Center City's northwest quadrant. It starts at Philadelphia City Hall, curves around Logan Circle, and ends before the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Philadelphia Aquarium was one of the first aquariums in the United States. It was located on the east bank of the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia’s decommissioned Fairmount Water Works buildings from 1911 to 1962, as part of Fairmount Park.

Eakins Oval is a traffic circle in Philadelphia. It forms the northwest end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway just in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with a central array of fountains and monuments, and a network of pedestrian walkways. This loop of road usually carries a large volume of traffic, as it connects the core of the city with Fairmount Park, Kelly Drive (formerly East River Drive), and Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive (formerly West River Drive). During parades and other major municipal events such as the Thanksgiving Day Parade, and large concerts such as Live 8 Philadelphia and the Budweiser Made in America Festival, the roadways are shut down to automobile traffic and the oval becomes center stage for the gathering. Eakins Oval was the site of the stage for the 2017 NFL Draft. The oval was part of urban planner Jacques Gréber's design for the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, which he proposed in 1917.The oval is named for Thomas Eakins, Philadelphian, world-famous realist painter, and fine arts educator. The southeastern part of the oval serves as a parking lot; it was originally part of the Parkway until traffic modifications isolated it in the 1960s.