The focal piece of the Wynn Boston Harbor casino, currently under construction, will be Jeff Koons‘ 6-foot, 5-inch Popeye sculpture, which casino owner Steve Wynn purchased in 2014 for $28 million. Wynn is a big fan of Jeff Koons work and has purchased Koons sculptures for other properties.
A rendering of the Popeye sculpture to be placed in the Wynn Boston Harbor lobby
The $2.4 billion 5-star hotel and casino is being built on the Mystic River at the end of Boston Harbor.
Besides the casino, it will have more than 650 rooms in a 27-story tower, 13 restaurants, large and small meeting rooms, a 37,000 square foot ballroom and over 30 acres of underground parking, to accommodate nearly 3,000 cars, with 1,000 of those spaces set aside for valet parking. For those who want to leave their cars at home, there will be bus routes to the casino and water shuttles going to and from the Boston Seaport in a less-than-20-minute ride.
The 2,000 pound sculpture, which a Sotheby’s art expert called, “one of the great sculptures that nobody knows,” is currently on display in Wynn’s Las Vegas hotel. Made of mirror-polished stainless steel, Wynn flies two cleaning specialists from Germany, twice a year, to do a day-long detailing. Each detailer is paid $15,000, plus travel and hotel expenses. The casino in Boston is scheduled to open in June of 2019.
Jeff Koons in Chicago
The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. A free weekend long event on October 21 and 22 will feature the works of Jeff Koons and other contemporary artists in an exhibit called You Are Here.
The weekend will also mark the opening of a new public space in the Museum, called the Commons, where visitors can take a break and relax.
Puppy at Surovek Gallery
In 1992, Jeff Koons was commissioned by three art dealers to create a sculpture to exhibit at Arolsen Castle in Bad Arolsen, Germany, during the Documenta 9 art show.
He created Puppy, a 43-foot tall topiary sculpture of a West Highland Terrier puppy, displaying 20,000 plants, including marigolds, begonias, impatiens, petunias and lobelias.
The sculpture was a great public success. In 1995, it was dismantled and reconstructed, with a new armature and an internal irrigation system that held 60,000 plants, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia for the Sydney Festival.
The Guggenheim Foundation purchased Puppy in 1997 and installed it on the terrace of the Guggenheim Museum Bilboa. Before the dedication ceremony, police officer Jose Maria Aguirre was shot and killed as he questioned three men, disguised a gardeners, unloading flower arrangements from a van. Police found machine guns and grenades hidden among the flower pots. The terrace, in which Puppy stands, was dedicated to Jose Aguirre.
The following year, 1998, Koons produced the Puppy vase in white glazed porcelain, an edition of which is for sale in our gallery.
Jeff Koons at Surovek Gallery
Please contact us for more information about Puppy, or any of the other fine works available in our gallery.