Can’t decide between going to the funfair an a trip to the Museum of Modern Arts? Good news then: An amusement park called ‘Luna Luna’, which seemed to be forgotten about for over three decades, has just been undug – and it’s attractions are designed entirely by Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and other legendary artists.
Curated and put together by Austrian artist André Heller in the 1980s with an illustrious allstar-lineup of artists, the amusement park was Heller’s attempt to make art accessible not only to an elitist audience, but to the whole public in a playful and natural way. But let pictures do the talking:
Amongst others, ‘Luna Luna’ featured a ferris wheel decorated with Basquiat’s draft-ish drawings, a carousel with Haring characters and colorful attractions by Roy Lichtenstein, Salvador Dalí, Joseph Beuys, Kenny Scharf, Sonia Delaunay, Hundertwasser, Monika Gilsing and a long list of other artists. Jugglers, tightrope walkers, acrobats and theater actors rounded off the avant-garde fun fair.
‘Luna Luna’ premiered to critical acclaim in Hamburg, Germany, in 1987 but the hometown of the second ever BSTN store would remain the only place to host the ambitious event: A planned European tour failed, the park subsequently was sold to the U.S. and after legal issues occured, the ‘Luna Luna’ attractions seemed to have been forgotten in a Texas storage.
That was until a creative director stumbled across the topic recently and reached out to Drake (!), who reportedly ended up putting in a casual $100 million USD to restore ‘Luna Luna’. To make it even better, the ‘world’s first-ever art amusement park’ is set to tour again soon – and judging from the visually stunning website, the attractions look just as spectacular as they did in 1987.
Until ‘Luna Luna’ hopefully coming to a city near you (but most likely Toronto), enjoy more pictures of ‘Luna Luna’ past and present in this official trailer:
