A Keith Haring carousel, a Basquiat ferris wheel: long-lost pop art carnival gets new life in New York

In 1987, the great and good of the art scene designed rides for an avant garde ‘theme park’ in Hamburg. Decades later, Luna Luna has been lovingly resurrected

Five years ago, the creative director Michael Goldberg was working from home when he spotted a reference to Luna Luna on an obscure website. “I may have yelled on my couch,” he laughs now.

Goldberg had chanced upon the lost world of Luna Luna, an avant garde “theme park” staged in Hamburg in 1987, created by the artist André Heller, which featured surreal and playful rides designed by the great and the good of the art world. It included a ferris wheel by Jean-Michel Basquiat, a carousel by Keith Haring, a swing ride by their fellow 80s New York name Kenny Scharf, a funhouse by Salvador Dalí, a glass maze by Roy Lichtenstein and an entranceway by the abstract art pioneer Sonia Delaunay, to name a few.

Top: The carnival is reconstructed. Bottom: Luna Luna Carousel in Los Angeles.