A Pony, a Dino and 50,000 Flowers Walk into a Museum
Jeff Koons’ monumental floral sculpture Split Rocker will bloom year-round at LACMA, becoming a living landmark in Los Angeles.
In a city where spectacle and substance often go hand in hand, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has announced a bold new addition to its landscape.
Jeff Koons’ Split Rocker, the artist’s monumental floral sculpture, will be installed in the museum’s expanded grounds by late 2025.
A fantastical fusion of horticulture and high art, Split Rocker rises to an impressive 37 feet and is composed of over 50,000 living blooms.
Its form, half toy pony and half dinosaur, is a strikingly surreal silhouette that draws from the innocent visual language of childhood while nodding to the grand tradition of 18th-century European topiary.
Beneath the blooms lies a hidden engineering marvel: a complex irrigation system that enables the sculpture to flourish, adapting with the seasons and evolving over time.
Longtime patrons Lynda and Stewart Resnick are gifting this unique work to LACMA through their foundation.
The couple’s generous support, which includes not only the acquisition but also the ongoing maintenance of the piece, continues their decades-long commitment to shaping LACMA’s vision and cultural legacy.
Michael Govan, LACMA’s CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, remarked, “Jeff is unmatched in his ability to infuse contemporary art with both playful charm and intellectual gravitas. We are thrilled to welcome this living sculpture to our collection.”
Split Rocker will be a centrepiece of the museum’s reimagined 3.5 acre park, an open and elevated green space being created as part of the museum’s ambitious campus transformation, culminating in the opening of the David Geffen Galleries in 2026.
Among Koons’s four known floral sculptures of this kind, LACMA’s will be the only one designed to bloom throughout the year, thanks to Southern California’s temperate climate and the artist’s commitment to using drought-tolerant flora.
First unveiled in 2000 at the Palais des Papes in Avignon, Split Rocker has since travelled to the Château de Versailles, the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland, Glenstone in Maryland and New York’s Rockefeller Center.
Its arrival in Los Angeles signals not just the sculpture’s return to public view, but also its permanent place in the cultural landscape of the city.
Jeff Koons remains one of the most influential artists of our era, known for his large scale works that elevate everyday objects into icons of modernity.
His signature style, featuring gleaming surfaces, exaggerated scale and conceptual clarity, has made him a fixture in the world’s most prestigious collections.
LACMA has long celebrated Koons’s work, having featured Rabbit, Balloon Dog (Blue), Cracked Egg (Red) and Balloon Monkey (Orange) in past exhibitions.
For the Resnicks, the gift of Split Rocker is a continuation of a philanthropic legacy deeply woven into LACMA’s fabric.
From leading the expansion of the campus with the Resnick Pavilion to donating numerous works of art, their contributions have helped shape the museum into a world-class institution.
Lynda Resnick served on the museum’s board for nearly 25 years, including more than two decades as Chair of the Acquisitions Committee.
With Split Rocker, the Resnicks once again affirm their commitment to civic beauty and artistic excellence. And for the city of Los Angeles, this whimsical flowering colossus promises to be more than a sculpture. It is a living landmark in the making.
