Conceived by Austrian artist André Heller, Luna Luna first opened in Hamburg in the summer of 1987 as the world's first art amusement park. Rather than asking artists to contribute work for the walls of a gallery, Heller invited many of the leading artists of the twentieth century to design rides and attractions that visitors could physically experience. The result was an extraordinary collaboration featuring artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Salvador Dalí, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, Sonia Delaunay and Kenny Scharf, amongst many others.
Los Angeles, California, 1986. Photo: © Sabina Sarnitz. Courtesy Luna Luna, LLC
What fascinates me most about Luna Luna is not the scale of the project, but the idea itself. Heller wasn't proposing another exhibition; he was proposing an entirely different way of experiencing art. By asking artists to revisit the imagination of their childhood and design their own amusement park attractions, he blurred the boundaries between fine art, architecture, performance and entertainment. It demonstrated that art could exist far beyond the traditional white gallery wall.
Despite attracting around 250,000 visitors during its original three-month run in 1987, Luna Luna was never able to embark on the international tour that had originally been planned. Following legal disputes, the artworks were packed into forty-four shipping containers and remained in storage in Texas for more than three decades, becoming one of the art world's great forgotten stories.
Visitors enter Luna Luna gates. Hamburg, Germany, 1987. Photo: © Sabina Sarnitz. Courtesy Luna Luna, LLC
In recent years, entrepreneur Michael Goldberg rediscovered the collection and, with financial backing from Drake's entertainment company DreamCrew and production support from Live Nation, Luna Luna was restored and reintroduced to the public as Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy. After opening in Los Angeles in 2023, the exhibition travelled to The Shed in New York, allowing a new generation to experience a project that many believed had been lost forever.
Luna Luna demonstrates that audiences don't always need to stand quietly in front of an artwork to experience it. Instead, they can move through it, play with it and become part of the narrative. The project challenges assumptions about where art belongs and who it is for.
Read more here on Luna Luna´s Official website: Luna Luna´s Official Website