Personal Life
While a student at the Maryland College of Art, Koons conceived a daughter, Shannon Rodgers. Though he offered to marry the girl's mother, she felt that they were too young for the commitment, and the couple reluctantly put the child up for adoption. Shannon Rodgers reconnected with Koons in 1995.
In 1991, he married Hungarian-born naturalized-Italian pornography star Cicciolina (Ilona Staller) who for five years (1987–1992) pursued an alternate career as a member of the Italian parliament. While they still maintained a place in Manhattan, Koons and Ilona lived in Munich. In 1992, they had a son, Ludwig. The marriage ended soon afterward amid allegations that Koons had subjected Staller to physical and emotional abuse . They agreed to joint custody of the child, but Staller left to Rome with the child, where mother and son remain. A long custody battle ensued with the award of sole custody to Koons by the U.S. court in 1998, which had also dissolved the marriage. However, he ended up losing custody when the case went to Italy's Supreme Court.
In 2008, Staller filed suit against Koons for failing to pay child support.
Koons is now married to Justine Wheeler, an artist and former employee who began working for Koons' studio in 1995.
Read more about this topic: Jeff Koons
Famous quotes related to personal life:
“Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters ‘woman’s peculiar sphere,’ her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)
“He hadn’t known me fifteen minutes, and yet he was ... ready to talk ... I was still to learn that Munshin, like many people from the capital, could talk openly about his personal life while remaining a dream of espionage in his business operations.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)