In a few years’ time, a giant teddy bear, a full-scale replica of a brownstone covered in clothing or a pair of legs painted with color dots could rise up on the High Line on New York’s West Side. Which work will ultimately be installed is up to the public.
High Line Art is once again seeking public comment for public art proposals that will go on view in 2029 and 2030 at its plinth, located above 30th Street and 10th Avenue. Until September 8, the public can leave a comment on each of the 62 proposals, responding to questions like, “Can you imagine this artwork on the Plinth? Why or why not? Is this proposal a good fit for the High Line? For New York City? For our time?”
The proposals come from some of today’s most closely watched artists, including Nina Chanel Abney, Kelly Akashi, Kevin Beasley, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Anthea Hamilton, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, Omar Mismar, Michael Rakowitz, and Anicka Yi.
This cohort of proposals were nominated by a group of nine international curators that includes Samdani Art Foundation artistic director Diana Campbell Betancourt; Amanda Carneiro, chief curator of the 2027 Bienal de São Paulo; KW Institute director Emma Enderby; independent curator Ekow Eshun, who is also the current chairman of the Fourth Plinth commission in London’s Trafalgar Square; and Swiss Institute director Stefanie Hessler.
The idea of the High Line Plinth began in 2016, with the first two commissions by Simone Leigh and Sam Durant going on view in 2019 and 2021. They were part of an exhibition of maquettes of their proposals, which ultimately led to High Line Art to seek public comment on the proposals it was considering. The next round of proposals was subject to comment in 2021, from which works by Pamela Rosenkranz and Ivan Argote were selected. In 2023, High Line Art once asked for the public’s input, which led to the commissioning of Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s The Light That Shines Through the Universe, a giant version of a Bamiyan Buddha that is currently on view. A sixth commission also chosen from the 2023 cohort will be announced next year.
The High Line Plinth commissions have proven extremely popular with the public, with Argote’s Dinosaur, a giant sculpture of pigeon, becoming the subject of a Change.org petition begun six months ago in order to make it a permanent. “Removing the sculpture would eliminate a piece of art that has already become deeply meaningful to the community in a short period of time,” the petition reads. That commitment has spurred High Line Art to once again ask for the public’s commentary.
“Created by artists who hail from Bangladesh to Argentina to Madagascar and all other corners of the globe, these 62 new proposals for the High Line Plinth each present astonishing new visions for public monuments while speaking to the current moment,” High Line Art director and chief curator Cecilia Alemani told ARTnews in an email. “After receiving such enthusiastic responses to Iván Argote’s Dinosaur and Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s The Light That Shines Through the Universe, we’re very eager to hear from the public on what they’d like to see on the High Line Plinth in the future.”
Below, a look at 15 artist proposals for the High Line Plinth, along with short artist statements for each one. (The full list can be accessed on the High Line’s website.)
-
Nina Chanel Abney, HOLD
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist “HOLD is a flat, double-sided teddy bear with outstretched arms. The figure is immediately recognizable, often associated with comfort and safety. HOLD subverts this sense of familiarity by referring to the complicated origins of the teddy bear, highlighting Holt Collier, a formerly enslaved Black bear tracker, and the role he played in Theodore Roosevelt’s 1902 hunting excursion in Mississippi.”
-
Kevin Beasley, Housing (Fragment)
Image Credit: TIMOTHY SCHENCK/Courtesy the artist “Housing (Fragment) is a full-scale sculptural fragment of a New York brownstone cast in resin and locally sourced clothing. One side reproduces the building’s façade and stoop; the reverse is sealed with layered resin panels embedded with articles of clothing. Referencing New York’s longtime housing crisis, the work presents an iconic residential form as a partial and enclosed structure.”
-
Seba Calfuqueo, To Swallow Oneself
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist “To Swallow Oneself is a sculpture of a large metal head with braided hair emerging from its gaping mouth, forming a continuous flow back to the figure’s scalp. Drawing on Indigenous understandings of hair as a living extension of the body, the work reclaims it from histories of control, presenting it as a material of resistance, identity, and collective presence.”
-
María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Searching for Light
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist “Searching for Light is a 19-foot-tall figure enveloped in cereus petals, with a closed bud at its crown. A vine traces the spine, echoing the plant’s upward growth. Inspired by the cereus flower, which blooms briefly after years of waiting, the sculpture holds a moment of anticipation, bringing attention to slow, unseen processes of growth and transformation.”
-
Nidhal Chamekh, Friction
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist “Friction joins together fragments of the head of the Apollo of Mantua and a Punu mask from Gabon into a single, divided figure. The vertical seam evokes the Atlantic Ocean as a site of rupture, recalling the transatlantic slave trade and ongoing cultural entanglement. Combining cast aluminum and carved wood, the work confronts colonial classifications while merging distinct artistic and historical traditions.”
-
Anthea Hamilton, All Good Legs
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist “All Good Legs is a sculpture of two oversized legs made from steel, brick, and industrial materials, painted with colorful dots. Drawing on graffiti and nightclub lighting, the surface adds energy and movement, while the exaggerated pose balances strength, playfulness, and vulnerability. The work acts as a spatial meditation on race and gender, using the female form to challenge the phallocentric skyscrapers that compose New York’s iconic skyline.”
-
Cannupa Hanska Luger, TROPHY
Image Credit: TIMOTHY SCHENCK/Courtesy the artist “TROPHY depicts a raptor and serpent entwined around an obelisk, recalling the form of a victory monument. From afar, it suggests dominance; up close, the figures reveal human faces locked in a kiss. The use of silver, a color associated with second place, further subverts ideas of triumph, reframing power as relational, entangled, and shaped through interdependence rather than conquest.“
”
-
Cinthia Marcelle, Economia de Base
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist “Economia de Base is a sculpture of an inverted piggy bank placed on a metal safe that collects coins deposited by the public. By transforming a familiar piggy bank into a shared structure, the work shifts savings from a private act to a collective one, drawing inspiration from the Black Panther Party’s community survival programs. The accumulated funds are redistributed, presenting the economy as a system shaped by participation and exchange.”
-
Omar Mismar, Sleep Doesn’t Travel Well, Dreams Must
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist “Sleep Doesn’t Travel Well, Dreams Must is a towering column made of 60 stacked mattresses. From afar, they appear soft and precarious, suggesting the instability of refugee life where homes are constantly uprooted and reassembled in unfamiliar places; up close, each is revealed as a mosaic with floral patterns formed from small tesserae, or small cubical pieces of stone. Drawing on familiar scenes of global displacement, the work transforms a domestic object into a rigid structure that carries traces of movement and memory.“
-
Priscilla Monge, Time-Crystal
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist “Time-Crystal is a corten steel structure shaped like a faceted house, with small openings that allow visitors to insert flowers. Phrases cut into the surface mark it as a place for joy and a place for grief. As flowers accumulate and fade, the sculpture becomes a shared record of participation, where individual gestures form a collective expression of memory and emotion.”
-
Wendy Red Star, One Blue Bead
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist “One Blue Bead is a vertical stack of four monumental trade beads, each drawn from objects that circulated through global exchange. From Venetian chevron beads to those tied to westward expansion and the myth of Manhattan’s purchase, the sculpture traces how value, land, and identity were shaped through trade. It holds these histories in tension within the city they helped form.”
-
Kathleen Ryan, Red Delicious
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist “Red Delicious is a monumental apple core with a glossy red exterior and a luminous interior of abalone shell, crystals, and stone. The work draws on the apple’s layered symbolism—as an emblem of New York, a sign of desire, and a marker of consumption. The opulent structure reflects a city shaped by extremes, where excess and waste coexist, and where beauty and decay are inseparable.”
-
Tromarama, Simpul
Image Credit: Courtesy the artists “Simpul is a looping red slide with no beginning or end, evoking both a playground and a system of continuous circulation. Referencing gestures like scrolling and swiping, the work reflects how play produces data and value. The looping form recalls both a lasso and the motion of a hand navigating a screen. By connecting physical play with digital activity, Simpul reframes leisure as part of a larger system of repetition and extraction.”
-
Osman Yousefzada, The Mango Boat
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist “The Mango Boat is a sculpture of a boat stacked with rows of tinned mangoes arranged in a pyramid. Referencing the movement of mangoes from South and Southeast Asia to the Americas through colonial trade, the work connects everyday objects to histories of labor, migration, and exchange.”
-
David Zink Yi, A horse’s hooves
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist “A horse’s hooves is a vertical stack of four enlarged horse hooves, cast in recycled aluminum and supported by an exposed steel structure. Open at the base and sides, the sculpture can be experienced from multiple viewpoints. Originating from the artist’s study of preserved hooves, the work isolates a structural fragment of the familiar equestrian monument and transforms it into the central form.”
