Jeff Koons Is Coming to Art Basel Miami Beach — and the Conversation Is Free

Jeff Koons will appear at Art Basel Miami Beach on Wednesday, December 2, for a one-on-one conversation with Tom Eccles, Executive Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. The conversation is organized in partnership with Qatar Creates Talks and is free and open to the public.

The topic is the relationship between artistic imagination, public space, and the audiences who give artworks their meaning — drawing on Koons's extraordinary career and his recent projects in Qatar. Eccles, who spent years directing New York's Public Art Fund and has been working on Qatar's public art program since 2018, is a natural interlocutor for a conversation about art at civic scale.

Koons is one of the most recognizable artists alive. His mirror-polished stainless-steel Rabbit and Balloon Dog are among the most reproduced sculptures of the past century. His monumental floral works Puppy and Split-Rocker have become permanent fixtures in cities from Bilbao to Sydney. For over four decades, his practice has explored themes of self-acceptance, empowerment, and transcendence — and generated more debate about the nature of art, commerce, and popular culture than almost any other living artist.

The conversation takes place at 4:45PM in the Auditorium (Grand Ballroom), Level 2 North, Miami Beach Convention Center. Book through the Art Basel app. Doors open at 4:35PM.