Welcome to Luna Luna, the carnival that time forgot

|
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Keith Haring’s carousel and mural are part of Luna Luna, a restored art carnival in a Los Angeles warehouse, Jan. 17, 2024. The original park opened in Hamburg, Germany, in 1987 with 30 original works; 16 are on display in the LA exhibit this spring.

Whimsy is everywhere at the art carnival Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy. Don’t try to hop on the carousel, though. That’s designed
by Keith Haring, one of the 20th century’s most celebrated artists.

The fact that so many works at Luna Luna, which runs through this spring in Los Angeles, are only for gazing upon hardly lessens the joy.

“You just smile,” says Gina Gallo, an animated-film producer visiting the exhibit. “It’s eye candy for the soul.”

The fanciful pieces have roots in Hamburg, Germany, where Austrian multimedia artist André Heller in the 1980s summoned a who’s who of visionaries to think up rides, music, and immersive experiences for an amusement park. Salvador Dalí added a domed, mirrored room; David Hockney created his version of a forest; Jean-Michel Basquiat dreamed up a Ferris wheel. And music by Philip Glass filled a pavilion by Roy Lichtenstein.

After its Hamburg run, the park was packed up and put away in storage, where it languished for decades. It took rapper Drake to help revive it – with a $100 million investment from his entertainment company. Every detail of every structure invites discovery.

The attractions beckon Mimi Maynard, who runs a production company with Ms. Gallo and a third partner. She says she wishes she could climb aboard.

“It’s magical,” she says.

You've read 3 of 3 free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Welcome to Luna Luna, the carnival that time forgot
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2024/0313/Welcome-to-Luna-Luna-the-carnival-that-time-forgot
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe
CSM logo

Why is Christian Science in our name?

Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that.

The Church publishes the Monitor because it sees good journalism as vital to progress in the world. Since 1908, we’ve aimed “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as our founder, Mary Baker Eddy, put it.

Here, you’ll find award-winning journalism not driven by commercial influences – a news organization that takes seriously its mission to uplift the world by seeking solutions and finding reasons for credible hope.

Explore values journalism About us