“The Musée du Louvre has confirmed that it plans to show works by Jeff Koons early next year to coincide with the US artist’s retrospective at the Centre Pompidou. The Louvre declined to comment on the content of the installation or possible lenders: a museum spokesman tells us that the presentation is “a work in progress”. In a profile of the US artist in its July issue, Vanity Fair first reported that “at the Louvre, in January 2015, Koons will install a selection of his large-scale balloon sculptures, including Balloon Rabbit, Balloon Swan, and Balloon Monkey, in the 19th-century galleries.”
The artist’s retrospective is on show at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art (until 19 October). The show, which includes around 150 works dating from 1978 to today, will travel to Paris (26 November-27 April 2015) and then on to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain (5 June-27 September 2015).
The exhibition, billed as the “first major retrospective in Europe dedicated to Koons”, includes key works such as the porcelain piece Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988, One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Spalding Dr. J 241 Series), 1985, showing a basketball suspended in a tank, and the “Popeye” series including the Olive Oyl painting, 2003.
Koons showed a series of works at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris from 2008 to 2009, which proved highly controversial. The exhibition included the sculptures Balloon Dog (Magenta), 1994-2000, and Lobster, 2003 installed in the chateau’s grandest rooms. French press reports claimed that the US artist’s Versailles show in France could increase the value of six works on loan from the billionaire collector François Pinault.”
Source: The Art Newspaper
