Bronze Statue of Roger Ebert unveiled at Ebertfest

A bronze statue honoring longtime film critic and Pulitzer Prize winner Roger Ebert was unveiled Thursday in Illinois, where he grew up.

Ebert died last April at the age of 70 after a long battle with cancer.

He won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1975, becoming the first film critic to do so.

He became a household name in the U.S. through his nationally syndicated column and the television show he co-hosted with Gene Siskel, a Chicago Tribune film critic who died in 1999.

The pair would end their film reviews with each critic giving it either a thumbs up or thumbs down.

His wife, Chaz Ebert, described the statue as "interactive art," because it shows her late husband giving his famous "thumbs up" sign and sitting between two empty theater seats where visitors can sit.

The statue will remain outside the Virginia Theatre in Champaign, Illinois, during this week's annual Ebertfest film festival, which ends Sunday. Organizers hope to have it permanently installed outside the theater over the summer.

Spike Lee and Oliver Stone are among those slated to attend this year's Ebertfest, which celebrates films that may not have received the recognition they deserved when they first ran. Before his death, Ebert made a long list of movies that he would want played at his festival, and Chaz Ebert said she and festival director Nate Kohn would pick films from that list and others they think her husband would have liked when choosing the lineup each year.

"We probably have enough movies for the next ten years," she said.

The statue was made by artist Rick Harney.