Mysterious Trump statue appears near Art Museum, then carted away

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 the 1940s. 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 limelight 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.

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