High Line installs giant Buddha
- Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s giant Buddha is now on view on Manhattan’s High Line, where the park’s fifth Plinth commission opened in late April. - The work is a 27-foot sandstone homage to Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Buddhas, with brass hands cast from artillery shells and on view through fall 2027. - It matters because the piece turns a busy New York public-art site into a memorial about cultural destruction, survival, and repair.
The new thing on the High Line is not just a big sculpture. It’s a 27-foot Buddha by Tuan Andrew Nguyen, and the scale is the point. You see it from the park, from the street, and from blocks away. But the real story is not “New York got another giant artwork.” It’s that Nguyen used one of the city’s busiest public-art stages to make a memorial about something that was destroyed far from Manhattan — the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. ### What exactly went up? The sculpture is called *The Light That Shines Through the Universe*. It sits on the High Line Plinth at the Spur near 30th Street and 10th Avenue, the park’s dedicated site for oversized commissions. The piece opened in late April 2026 as the fifth Plinth installation, replacing Iván Argote’s giant pigeon, and it is scheduled to stay up through fall 2027. ### Why a Buddha? (thehighline.org) Nguyen is not installing a generic religious icon. He is reimagining one of the Bamiyan Buddhas — monumental sixth-century figures carved into cliffs in central Afghanistan. Those statues were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, and that destruction became one of the most widely recognized examples of cultural erasure in modern history. The High Line piece works like an echo rather than a literal reconstruction. (thehighline.org) ### What makes this version different? The body is rendered in sandstone, but the hands do a lot of the emotional work. Nguyen cast them from brass artillery shells, using war material to form ritual gestures associated with compassion and fearlessness. Basically, the sculpture turns the stuff of violence into a sign of care. That reversal is the whole argument of the piece. (thehighline.org) ### Why put it on the High Line? Because the High Line is not a quiet museum corner — it’s a tourist artery, a neighborhood park, and a contemporary-art billboard all at once. The Plinth was built specifically for works that can hold their own in that environment. So Nguyen’s sculpture is doing two jobs at once: it has to read instantly as an object in public space, and then reward people who stop long enough to ask what history it is carrying. (thehighline.org) ### Why is this landing now? Partly because the High Line’s spring program is leaning hard into public art, and partly because New York’s art calendar is crowded this time of year. But the timing also sharpens the contrast. In a season built around attention, fairs, and spectacle, Nguyen’s piece is about absence — what’s left after destruction, and what can still be rebuilt in memory. (thehighline.org) ### Is this meant as a religious object? Not in the devotional sense. It’s public art first. But Nguyen is clearly using the visual language of Buddhism — especially the hand gestures, or mudras — to talk about ethics, grief, and endurance. Turns out that makes the sculpture feel unusually calm for something so physically imposing. ### What happens around it? (thehighline.org) The High Line is building programming around the sculpture, including a lecture and guided meditation series at the Spur. That matters because the piece is not being treated as a one-off photo backdrop. The park is framing it as a site for reflection, conversation, and historical memory over the next year and a half. (thehighline.org) ### So what’s the bottom line? The easy read is “giant Buddha on the High Line.” The better read is that Tuan Andrew Nguyen used one of New York’s loudest public platforms to make a work about loss that refuses to stay lost. In a city that sees a lot of spectacle, that’s a sharper move than it first appears. (thehighline.org)
