The original Basquiat Ferris Wheel and the Keith Haring Carousel are two high-art-meets-fairground attractions coming to New York this fall. Luna Luna, the once lost art carnivalTour the shed at Hudson Yards.
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Originally conceived by avant-garde Austrian artist Andre Heller, Luna Luna was inspired by the local carnival (called “Luna Park” outside the United States) and opened in Hamburg, Germany in the summer of 1987.
Participating artists include Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Salvador Dalí, David Hockney, Sonia Delaunay, Roy Lichtenstein and Kenny Scharf, who either decorated vintage carnival equipment or created their own creations for the pavilion.
In 1990, after a potential European tour and plans by the city of Vienna to purchase Luna Luna fell through, Heller agreed to sell the project to the Stephen and Mary Birch Foundation. That decision set off decades of litigation over rights concerns and disputes over entry charges, and kept Luna Luna untouched until its 2022 defense.
Anthony Gonzales, chief executive of Luna Luna and a partner in Drake’s DreamCrew, said the mix of avant-garde art and pop culture displayed at Luna Luna made it accessible to newcomers, a sort of “Trojan horse” for gallery novices.
“New York is the capital of the art world,” he said. “We really saw that this was a really big moment.”
Michael Goldberg, founder of Something Special Studios and chief experience and creative officer of the team that helped revive Luna Luna, said it made sense to come to New York because of the roots of artists such as Basquiat, Herring and Scharf in the city.
“For a lot of artists, this is really where they grew up in some cases, but for a lot of them their art career really started,” he said.
Luna Luna will span both the gallery and adjacent plaza of the shed, which when covered by a movable outer shell can be transformed into a performance space with 115 feet of vertical clearance. That height is important to accommodate some of the exhibit’s taller works, such as the Basquiat Ferris Wheel, which nearly kissed the ceiling of his temporary home in Los Angeles.
“There is such a close match between Shedd’s animating philosophy and this exhibition, which features the work of world-class artists in its most engaging and inviting format,” said Shedd Chief Executive Max Hodges.
Luna Luna will open to the public on Nov. 20 and will be the centerpiece of the Shed’s 2024-2025 season of programming, including a production of Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” anchored by Kenneth Branagh; a one-night performance of Brooklyn-based rapper Ms. Boogie’s debut album, “The Breakdown”; And a staging “The Brothers Size,” a play by Terrell Alvin McCraneywho wrote the play “Moonlight” and co-wrote its screenplay adaptation.
The cultural alchemy of bringing high-quality work to a wider range of people was part of Heller’s original intention for Luna Luna, said Alex Puts, artistic director of the Shed.
“Heller took the fairground as a format to commission some of the most important artists of the late 20th century,” Poots said. “He has not only maintained the quality of artistry, but has found many, many doors and windows for audiences from all walks of life to come in.”
An undisputed pop culture doorway into Luna Luna is now Drake, whose DreamCrew is a majority investor. But visitors hoping for a celebrity sighting may be disappointed. When asked if the star might make an appearance, Gonzales remained tight-lipped.
“We’ll see,” he said.
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