High Line Unveils Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s 27-Foot Buddha Sculpture in Manhattan
A sandstone Buddha now rises above 10th Avenue and 30th Street, adding a new landmark to Manhattan’s High Line. Vietnamese sculptor and visual artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen (b. 1976) has installed The Light That Shines Through the Universe (2026), a 27-foot-tall commission for the park’s Plinth that will remain on view through Fall 2027.
The work draws on one of the most painful episodes in recent cultural memory: the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan by the Taliban in 2001. Nguyen’s sculpture echoes those monumental cliff carvings, but it does not attempt restoration in any literal sense. Instead, the artist has shaped the Buddha’s hands from melted-down artillery shells, leaving a visible separation between the sandstone body and the glowing appendages. The effect is both solemn and unresolved, a formal acknowledgment that some losses cannot be repaired.
Nguyen received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2025 and recently closed a major presentation at the Art Institute of Chicago. His broader practice has long returned to erased or overlooked histories, often through sculpture and film that consider reparation, memory, and the afterlife of violence. The High Line commission extends that inquiry into public space, where the work meets a broad and uncurated audience.
Cecilia Alemani, director and chief curator of High Line Art, described the sculpture as a timely monument and a counterpoint to extremism and iconoclasm. Her remarks place the commission within a larger conversation about what public art can hold: grief, resilience, and the fragile persistence of cultural memory.
The High Line Plinth has become one of New York’s most visible platforms for ambitious sculpture. Previous commissions include Iván Argote’s monumental pigeon, Pamela Rosenkranz’s pink-and-red Old Tree, and Sam Durant’s fiberglass drone. This season also includes new works by Katherine Bernhardt, Patricia Ayres, and Derek Fordjour, underscoring the park’s continuing role as a stage for contemporary art in the city.
