Jeff Koons is an American sculptor and painter, born in 1955 in York, Pennsylvania, who earned his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and also studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before launching his first solo exhibition in 1980 and establishing a studio practice in New York City. He is known for sculptures of everyday and popular-culture objects, including mirror-polished stainless-steel balloon animals, often fabricated at large scale using industrial techniques and readymade imagery; signature works include Rabbit, Puppy, Balloon Dog, and Michael Jackson and Bubbles. His work is held in major collections including MoMA, the Guggenheim, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and recent solo exhibitions have been staged at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Qatar Museums in Doha, and Gagosian in New York.