The ‘forgotten fantasy’ of a 1980s amusement park

“Luna Luna,” which first opened in 1987, was the brainchild of artist André Heller. It’s now restored to its former glory in a large-scale installation in Los Angeles.

A time capsule is often a small cache of significant items representing a particular moment in history — newspaper clippings, photographs, memorabilia and other cultural artifacts. But in early 2022, a different kind of capsule (and certainly one much larger than usual) was unearthed, after being hidden away for over three decades inside 44 shipping containers, most recently in the small town of Nocona, Texas. Its contents? An entire amusement park. Luna Luna, an “art amusement park” that once operated in the 1980s with rides and attractions designed by legendary artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Salvador Dalí, Keith Haring and Sonia Delaunay, is now on view for the first time in 36 years. The immersive installation experience, titled Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy, opened last Friday in Los Angeles. Upon entering the sprawling, 60,000-square-foot warehouse space in which Luna Luna is now housed, park-goers are instantly transported back to when many of the artists whose creations it features were at the peak of their fame: Keith Haring’s vivid line drawings surround his hand-painted carousel; David Hockney’s cylindrical “Enchanted Tree” feels like a prop straight out of a Disney movie. Stilt walkers, costumed characters and puppeteers from the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, LA’s longtime children’s theater company, meander around in homage to the jugglers, plate spinners, mimes, and other theatrical performers who contributed to the spectacle in its original iteration. The park, which originally opened in Hamburg, Germany, in the summer of 1987, was the brainchild of Austrian artist, author and pop star André Heller. More than a decade earlier, Heller began envisioning Luna Luna, inspired by the Prater amusement park in his childhood home, Vienna. His goal was to create a world in which art could be accessible — and engaging — to all; in a 2022 interview with the New York Times, Heller said he had hoped to “build a big bridge between the so-called avant-garde — the artists who were a little snobbish sometimes and didn’t connect with the masses — and the so-called normal people.” And after reportedly securing a six-figure grant from the German magazine Neue Revue, Heller traveled the world to persuade more than 30 of the era’s most renowned creatives — a list that also included Ingmar Bergman and Henry Miller — to contribute to Luna Luna. “The reason why all these important artists participated for so little money was because I told them, ‘Listen, you are constantly getting the greatest commissions; everyone wants your paintings or sculpture, but I am inviting you to take a trip back to your own childhood,” he told curator Dieter Buchhart in 2016. “Really without exception everyone answered by saying, sure, that‘s a nice, pleasant challenge.”