Aerial view of Luna Luna in Moorweide park. Hamburg, Germany, 1987. Photo: © Sabina Sarnitz. Courtesy Luna Luna LLC "And then, when everything was out of my mind, I met some people that started reminding me" — this is how Austrian multimedia artist André Heller introduced a miraculous turn of events that brough his long-forgotten love, Luna Luna, the first and only art amusement park, back into the spotlight.
The story of this fascinating project goes several decades in the past, to 1987, when Heller's idea to create a functional amusement park featuring works by the leading artists of his time, including Sonia Delaunay, Salvador Dalí, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and David Hockney, became a reality.
Opening its doors in Hamburg, Germany, in 1987, Luna Luna operated for several weeks before being closed with further plans to travel Europe and, when that foiled, to send it to San Diego. However, by a twist of fate, the park was never assembled on US soil and was instead left forgotten in 44 shipping containers in Texas until 2019.
After almost 37 years, the resurrected Luna Luna reopened in December 2023 at a studio in Los Angeles's Arts District, drawing more than 150,000 visitors. Following this successful debut, the park has moved to The Shed in New York City for a limited time. Here, we delve into the remarkable story of its creation, disappearance, and rediscovery.
Long Lost to History
Heller, a multitalented artist, actor, poet, and singer-songwriter, found inspiration in the Vienna Prater amusement park of his childhood. His goal was to create a park that would bring art closer to the public. “The idea,” Heller explained, “was to build a bridge between the so-called avant-garde—artists who were a little snobbish sometimes—and the so-called normal people.”
With $350,000 in funding from the German magazine Neue Revue, Heller set his dream in motion in 1985. A series of encounters with artists soon solidified the project’s extraordinary lineup. Sonia Delaunay designed the entry arch. Jean-Michel Basquiat, introduced to Heller by Andy Warhol, suggested including Miles Davis. Keith Haring brought in Kenny Scharf, and Roy Lichtenstein connected Heller with David Hockney. Even Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel laureate, wrote a letter of encouragement, which appeared on the back cover of the Luna Luna book.
The park was assembled in Europe, with over 220 artisans from Vienna contributing to its creation. When it opened in June 1987, it drew 250,000 visitors in just seven weeks. Life Magazine described Luna Luna as “an international carnival of the avant-garde,” where each pavilion “simultaneously elevates the mind and makes the jaw drop.” Heller hoped that Luna Luna would "travel the seas and the suns and the moons." However, things would not turn out quite as he expected.
With the European tour foiled and plans for the city of Vienna to buy the park also thwarted, Heller was sent into debt. Therefore, in 1990, he decided to sell the project for $6 million to the Stephen and Mary Birch Foundation, which wanted to show it in San Diego. However, several disputes and the final decision of the foundation to pull out of the deal led to several decades of litigation, during which Luna Luna remained in storage and was finally transported to rural Texas, where it stayed for the next 12 years.
In 2019, the forgotten park came to the attention of creative director Michael Goldberg, and a series of events was set off that will lead to Luna Luna's reappearance. Goldberg contacted famous rapper Drake and his DreamCrew, and within seconds of introduction, Drake agreed to invest in putting it back together. Then, the plan was brought to Heller through his musician son, and the deal was set with the Birch Foundation as well, allowing Luna Luna to finally leave its Texas home for California, where its new beginning was already planned.
"A Trojan horse of experimental art," as described by the curatorial director of the new Luna Luna, Kathy Noble, the park is a meeting place of different avant-garde styles. "The number of artistic movements it covers is kind of crazy," she explained.
Everything from abstraction, art brut, Dada, Fluxus, Neo-Expressionism, nouveau realism, pop art, surrealism, Viennese Actionism — most exhibitions will not cover this breadth.
Luna Luna showcases a constellation of artistic visions, blending surrealist fantasy, whimsical play, and bold experimentation. The New York show includes the carefully curated selection of original artist-created rides and attractions, along with new soon to be announced commissions, components, theatrics and performances. At the entrance, Sonia Delaunay's monumental archway welcomes visitors with bold geometric shapes and vivid colors, framing the iconic Luna Luna sign adorned with lightbulbs. This piece embodies Delaunay’s lifelong exploration of simultanism and contrasting hues, inviting audiences into a space where creativity thrives.
Inside, visitors encounter Keith Haring's carousel, a vibrant, industrially fabricated ride featuring characters from his iconic line drawings. Nearby, Kenny Scharf's Victorian-style painted chair swing dazzles with geometric shapes and cartoon figures, while freestanding sculptures add a playful touch. David Hockney's Enchanted Tree invites audiences to stroll through a forest-like pavilion painted with multicolored, geometric trees, set to Strauss’s classical music.
Jean-Michel Basquiat's painted Ferris wheel incorporates his recurring themes, such as references to jazz musician Charlie Parker and explorations of racial identity, all accompanied by Miles Davis's Tutu. Across the space, Arik Brauer's carousel transforms fantastical characters—like mermaids and anthropomorphic hands—into whimsical seating, complemented by a song performed by his daughter, Timna Brauer. Salvador Dalí's geodesic dome, Dalídom, offers a kaleidoscopic infinity effect set to Gregorian chants, its painted panels evoking surrealist dreams inspired by his Catalonian roots.
Rebecca Horn's Love Thermometer transforms body heat into a poetic display of emotions like “solitude” and “longing,” while Daniel Spoerri's Crap Chancellery uses absurdity to critique power, reimagining Nazi architectural aesthetics as a grotesque restroom installation. Manfred Deix's Palace of the Winds mixes humor and grotesquery in a live performance featuring flatulent sounds amplified alongside classical music, blurring the line between the banal and the ridiculous.
Roy Lichtenstein's Luna Luna Pavilion challenges spatial perception with its mirrored labyrinth inspired by his Perfect/Imperfect series, accompanied by a Philip Glass soundtrack. Additional highlights include André Heller's Wedding Chapel, where visitors could marry anything or anyone, offering a playful critique of restrictive social norms, and Monika GilSing's Wind Images, twenty-eight large-scale flags adorned with whimsical motifs that flutter joyously in the breeze.
Poncilí Creación's PonciliLand, a contemporary addition, invites visitors to assemble oversized foam sculptures into fantastical shapes or wear them as hybrid costumes, celebrating improvisation and play. Complementing the installations, archival photographs document the original Luna Luna fairground’s evolution, bridging past and present.
“You can be art-obsessed or have never heard of Basquiat, and Luna Luna will put a smile on your face. It’s one of those rare projects that has the power to bring together all walks of life—it’s a nostalgic format done in a totally new way,” says Michael Goldberg, Chief Experience Officer for Luna Luna and founder of Something Special Studios.
Inspired by childhood fantasy and with a need to bring art closer to people, but also to destroy divisions between art and entertainment, Luna Luna is a unique project that aimed to transform the role of art in contemporary society. It brought art away from white walls and institutions to a place associated with joy and happiness, enhancing and transforming this place along the way. This transformation, however, was not one-sided. Re-emerging after decades of being under the lock, the park also probes the boundaries of contemporary art, providing a good starting point for thinking about art within a different social context.
The limited run of Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy will open to the public at The Shed in New York until January 5th, 2025.
