BARUCH COLLEGE–The Shed in Hudson Yards has brought back the first-ever art amusement park, first opened in 1987, through “Luna Luna: The Forgotten Fantasy,” which runs from Nov. 20 to Jan. 5.
For seven weeks in 1987, in Hamburg, Germany, a large series of artists came together and opened “Luna Luna” to the public. “Luna Luna” was a project formulated by singer and poet Andre Heller, who dreamt of finding a way to bring a variety of different art forms together and allow them to be appreciated in a way that tore down the bounds of a traditional museum.
In an interview with TimeOut, Heller was asked how he was able to get so many different artists to commit to the creation of “Luna Luna.” His answer was simple: “I asked everyone the same questions: Have you ever been a child? Yes. As a child, did you visit an amusement park? Yes. Did you like it? Yes.”
In the past 40 years, every piece of the amusement park was scattered throughout 44 large shipping containers in Texas. Heller’s plan of taking “Luna Luna” on a world tour never came to be, but it is now finally coming to fruition. Although it is many years later, Heller is still around to see it happen.
