The Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens presents "Jeff Koons: Venus Lespugue," an exhibition pairing Jeff Koons' monumental stainless steel sculpture *Balloon Venus Lespugue (Orange)* (2013–2019) with ten certified copies of Paleolithic Venus figurines from major European museums. The Koons work, on public display for the first time, is loaned from the Homem Sonnabend Collection and directly references the 28,000-year-old Venus of Lespugue carved from mammoth tusk ivory.
The exhibition matters because it stages a direct visual and conceptual dialogue between Paleolithic art and contemporary sculpture, spanning over 40,000 years of human creativity. By juxtaposing ancient fertility symbols with Koons' mirror-polished balloon form, the show raises questions about the evolution of the symbolic body, the universality of feminine archetypes, and how material transformation—from mammoth ivory to stainless steel—alters or preserves meaning. It challenges linear art history narratives in favor of a trans-temporal conversation about beauty, form, and the female figure.