from jewel-covered apples to frozen clocks: 62 ideas for the high line’s next sculpture

62 possible monuments for new york’s high line

New York’s next High Line Plinth commissions remain several years away, though the debate around them has already begun. High Line Art has released 62 proposals for the seventh and eighth editions of the monumental public art program, scheduled to occupy the elevated site above Tenth Avenue in 2029 and 2030. Early visualizations place giant fruit, fragmented bodies, illuminated signs and unfamiliar creatures against the towers of Manhattan’s West Side.

The complete selection spans artists working across sculpture, installation and performance. Here, designboom takes a closer look at twelve proposals by familiar artists, moving from Kathleen Ryan’s jewel-encrusted apple core to Kelly Akashi’s passageway of enlarged steel lace.

The Plinth opened in 2019 as a dedicated platform for large-scale contemporary art, positioned at the edge of the High Line where the structure projects east over the avenue. Its changing commissions have included Pamela Rosenkranz’s branching pink Old Tree and Iván Argote’s beloved giant pigeon Dinosaur. Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s sandstone sculpture The Light That Shines Through the Universe currently occupies the site until Fall 2027, while the newly released proposals look years ahead — see the full list here!

kathleen ryan’s monumental apple core

Kathleen Ryan enlarges the remains of a bitten apple into Red Delicious, a glossy red shell with an interior assembled from abalone, crystals and stone. The familiar piece of discarded fruit becomes an oversized New York emblem, carrying references to desire, consumption and the city’s enduring association with the Big Apple.

Kathleen Ryan, Red Delicious

ali cherri fills a white bowl with decaying apples

Ali Cherri also turns to New York’s unofficial fruit. Apples in a White Bowl expands the familiar still life into a large white cement vessel filled with disproportionately sized bronze apples.

The fruit appears in an advanced state of decay, turning an image of domestic abundance toward decomposition and impermanence. From the street below, the bowl would read almost immediately; closer inspection reveals its contents collapsing under the passage of time.

Ali Cherri, Apples in a White Bowl

kelly akashi enlarges domestic lace in cor-ten steel

Kelly Akashi translates two delicate doilies into a 25-foot-tall Cor-Ten steel structure. Titled Double Negative, the proposal curves the perforated forms toward one another until they meet overhead, creating an open passage through which visitors can walk.

The scale shifts the doily from a domestic object associated with care and hand labor into a heavy piece of public infrastructure. Its lace pattern still allows light and views of the skyline to pass through the rusted steel.

Kelly Akashi, Double Negative

laure prouvost assembles a seven-armed collective body

Laure Prouvost proposes a fragmented terrazzo figure with seven arms. Titled DREAMING OF NO MORE FRONT TEARS, the work gathers separate pieces into a collective body whose hands hold a clementine, a flag and an infant, while other limbs end in glowing glass anemones.

Small openings near the figure’s base reveal intimate scenes within the larger body. The sculpture approaches the monument as something multiple and permeable, held together through gestures of care, protest and connection.

Laure Prouvost, DREAMING OF NO MORE FRONT TEARS

es devlin proposes a portrait of the present

Es Devlin enters the selection with A Portrait of the Present. The title continues the artist’s recent exploration of collective portraiture, including participatory works that invite members of the public to contribute their own faces and experiences to a changing image of society.

Placed on the Plinth, the proposal brings the language of portraiture into a site usually occupied by singular sculptural objects, asking how a monument might represent a population living through the same moment.

Es Devlin, A Portrait of the Present

ryan gander’s clock remains fixed at 88:88

Ryan Gander borrows the visual language of commercial signage for Time Piece (for everyone, everywhere, forever). A double-sided digital clock glows fluorescent yellow, its numbers permanently fixed at 88:88 while the colon continues to flash between them.

At the base, a black totem cycles through 500 statements concerning time. The sculpture keeps marking passing seconds while refusing to provide an accurate reading, separating the experience of time from the systems used to organize it.

serge attukwei clottey monumentalizes the kufuor gallon

Serge Attukwei Clottey presents Symbol of Hope, a monumental sculpture drawn from the yellow Kufuor gallon commonly used to transport and store water in Ghana.

The container has long formed the basis of Clottey’s Afrogallonism project, through which discarded plastic gallons become sculptures, installations and stitched surfaces. Enlarged above Tenth Avenue, the everyday object carries its histories of water access, trade and material reuse into the New York skyline.

Serge Attukwei Clottey, Symbol of Hope

bianca bondi imagines a vessel between land and sea

Bianca Bondi proposes MER, a large sculptural vessel gathering references to marine and terrestrial environments.

The vessel appears almost archaeological in scale, as though an object shaped by ritual or natural forces had surfaced among the High Line’s gardens. Its position between planted landscape, open air and dense architecture extends Bondi’s interest in unstable ecosystems and materials undergoing gradual transformation.

enrico david honors exhaustion

Enrico David centers physical and emotional fatigue in Sleepwalker: Honouring the Tired. The proposal takes the form of a monumental figure folded forward, with a glowing, onyx-colored face emerging from its bent posture.

A second, smaller figure leans against the sculpture’s base. Together, the two bodies turn the Plinth into a place of temporary support, giving tiredness and rest a scale usually reserved for heroic gestures.

Enrico David, Sleepwalker: Honouring the Tired

kei imazu connects manhattan to a remote indonesian island

Kei Imazu looks to the colonial history connecting New York and Indonesia. Her proposal, Current, begins with a 1667 agreement in which the Dutch ceded Manhattan to the English while retaining control of Run, a small nutmeg-producing island in the Banda Sea.

The sculpture draws a line between two territories rarely considered together, using the Plinth’s position in Manhattan to revisit the trades, resources and colonial ambitions that shaped the city’s early history.

Kei Imazu, Current

wally dion lets the weather enter the proposal

Wally Dion joins the round with wherever the wind may blow. Its title gives movement and weather a role in how the proposal is read, particularly on an exposed platform surrounded by open sky and the shifting air above Tenth Avenue.

The project brings Dion’s geometric visual language into a public setting far beyond the intimate scale of the artist’s sewn and circuit-board-based works.

anicka yi introduces a pelagic pod

Anicka Yi proposes Pelagic Pod, introducing the language of marine life and drifting biological forms to the Plinth.

The title places the work within Yi’s wider interest in speculative organisms and systems that exist beyond a strictly human perspective. Suspended against the skyline, the pod suggests a life form that has migrated from another environment and temporarily settled above the city.

Anicka Yi, Pelagic Pod

public comments will inform the curatorial shortlist

Although several gallery announcements have described the process as voting, the High Line is gathering written feedback rather than holding a public ballot. Visitors can open each proposal page and respond to questions concerning whether the work belongs on the Plinth, suits New York City and speaks to the present moment.

The comments will be shared with High Line Art’s curatorial team and considered as it forms a shortlist of finalists. No public ranking or vote total directly selects the commissioned artists. Feedback remains open through September 8th, 2026, with the shortlist expected to be announced in fall 2026.

The full set of proposals turn the selection process into an online exhibition of possible monuments. Each visualization tests how an object might meet the skyline, surrounding gardens and traffic below, while the comment period invites the public to consider which forms deserve to occupy one of New York’s most visible platforms for contemporary sculpture.

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