Artist Research Assignment

Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania in 1955He received a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1976. His first solo exhibition was in 1980, and after that Koons’s work has been shown in major galleries and institutions throughout the world. His Celebration sculptures were the subject of exhibitions on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Château de Versailles invited Koons to be the first living artist to be displayed there in the Grande apartments. The Whitney Museum of American Art is presenting the most detailed and complex survey of Koons’s career to date. Koons’s collection, A Retrospective, also traveled to the Pompidou Centre Paris in November, and to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in June 2015. He has earned merit for his public sculptures, such as the monumental floral sculpture Puppy in 1992, shown at Rockefeller Center and permanently installed at the Guggenheim Bilbao. Koons has received numerous awards and honors in recognition of his cultural achievements. Exceptionally, Koons received the Governor’s Awards for the Arts “Distinguished Arts Award” from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, President Jacques Chirac promoted Koons to Officier de la Legion d’Honneur, and most recently, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton honored Koons with the State Department’s Medal of the Arts for his outstanding commitment to the Art in Embassies Program and international cultural exchange. He has been a board member of The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children since 2002, and co-founded the Koons Family International Law and Policy Institute with ICMEC; to help combat global issues of child abduction and exploitation, and to protect the world’s children. Koons lives and works in New York City.
I enjoy his art work because it is different. It takes a childhood momento, such as a ballon animal, and turns it into a beautiful piece of art work. I love the size and appearance of the different figures he makes, they are large and shiny. I especially enjoy the last picture of the diamond because i have never seen a piece of art work like that before.