Tuan Andrew Nguyen: A Buddha Is Reborn on the High Line

Between the sea of sky-blue high-rise windows and the traffic funneling toward the Lincoln Tunnel, a large sandstone Buddha stands tall on the High Line, inviting Manhattan to embrace a moment of tranquility.

Tuan Andrew Nguyen's "The Light That Shines Through the Universe" (2026), the park's fifth site-specific commission, was selected from nearly 60 proposals. It was recently installed at West 30th Street and 10th Avenue, and is on view through Spring 2027. The 27-foot-tall sculpture stands out from its contemporary surroundings not only because of its warmth and timeworn quality, but because it resurrects a critical piece of destroyed cultural heritage - the Bamiyan Buddhas.

 "This sculpture creates a friction with the surroundings here in New York. It's not sleek like everything else you can see here," High Line's art director and chief curator Cecilia Alemani said to Hyperallergic. "It offers a hint to the public that temporality is not necessarily a straight line, that things can come back almost like in a wheel."