New Art Stage Coming To The High Line

CHELSEA, NY — A "plinth" — a stage to display sculpture — is coming to the High Line at 30th Street and 10th Avenue, according to the High Line's website.

Opening in 2018, the High Line Plinth will "designate the first space on the High Line dedicated specifically to art, featuring a rotating program of new commissions." The High Line Plinth is intended to be the focal point of the Spur, the block-long section that extends east on 30th Street off the newest, northernmost section of the High Line. The art program at the plinth will be funded by the Friends of the High Line and private donors, but the cost was not yet disclosed, according to the New York Times.

The High Line Plinth is inspired, its creators say, by "the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square, a widely respected, high-profile venue for a changing program of temporary commissioned artworks, whose influence reaches far beyond the art world and inspires dialogue amongst the general public."

High Line Art is considering 12 shortlisted proposals for the initial display. They include works by the artists Jonathan Berger, Minerva Cuevas, Jeremy Deller, Lena Henke, Matthew Day Jackson, Simone Leigh and Cosima von Bonin.

The proposal that the New York Times calls "the most overtly political" is by 55-year-old Sam Durant, whose "End White Supremacy" sign began lighting up Chelsea in November.

His proposal for the Plinth is a large sculptural version of a drone "mounted high above the piazza level" that also "acts as a wind vane, rotating atop its 20-foot column."

"In recognizing the sculpture as a drone," his proposal states, "visitors may imagine a shadow that, while largely absent in the United States, is increasingly omnipresent in countries and regions far from our own."

Image via the High Line