Election weirdness season has officially started.
A large golden statue of former President Donald Trump appeared at Maja Park on Benjamin Franklin Parkway Wednesday morning. It was placed about 15 feet behind and facing the Maja statue of a nude woman.
The plaque at the bottom of the Trump statue was titled “In honor of a lifetime of sexual assault.” Below that, it included an excerpt from Trump’s infamously recorded conversation (“they let you do anything”) with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush in 2005, which went public late in the 2016 presidential campaign.
A local resident, Nikki, was walking her dog in Maja Park shortly before 9 a.m. when she came across the scene.
“To be completely honest, I was livid at first. I saw the Trump statue and thought he had no reason to be put there,” she told Billy Penn. Then, Nikki saw the plaque.
“Then I was like, ‘Wow! This is insane,’ but also really smart, creative and very clever,” she said.
German artist Gerhard Marcks sculpted the “Maja” in 1942. The Nazi Party blacklisted Marcks and destroyed most of his work.
The unattributed sculpture depicts the former president curling the fingers on one hand in a crude gesture and making a closed-mouth smile. It commanded the attention of everyone walking through the park, according to Nikki.
However, the statue’s time in the spotlight was short-lived. City workers took it down and put it in a pickup truck before noon, the Inquirer reported.
This is the second satirical Trump sculpture to appear in a major city this week, and their composition and placement suggests they are related in some way. The first was in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday morning. Portland’s Trump statue had the same quote on its plaque and was also placed near a nude female statue. Someone took off its head by midday.
This is not the first piece of public art to appear in Philly this election season. A poster of Kamala Harris in an Eagles helmet was placed over advertising screens at SEPTA bus shelters in early September. Street artist Winston Tseng confirmed that he had created the poster, as a parody and satirical endorsement, but claimed no knowledge of how the posters ended up around town.
And it wasn’t even the only statue of Trump to be “discovered” Thursday. Later in the day, Inquirer reporter Julia Terruso tweeted out a photo of what she described as a 50-foot-high, nude sculpture of the former president along Kensington Avenue in Philly. It apparently has been traveling around the country, starting in Las Vegas. (You can see the tweet here, but NSFW.)
So like we said, election weirdness is here. Five days till America decides.
More election coverage from Billy Penn:
- It’s not just you. Harris and Trump have visited Philly a lot in the past two months.
- The late inclusion of about 200 Republican poll workers across the city is legal, and a return to pre-Covid norms.
- Philly mail-in voters should check that they’re ballots have been accepted. Here’s how.
- Eagles player helped with get-out-the-vote effort on bye week.
- Six Philly-based artists contributed to LOVE Park project to encourage voting.
