High Line Art, the Cecilia Alemani–curated enterprise the programs and commissions public artworks for the reimagined elevated-train-track park in New York, announced its next season, to start in the spring and continue (in most cases) for around a year.
In March, the High Line Billboard—a working billboard rising from the ground on 18th Street—will be adorned with Spring Cleaning (2026) by Katherine Bernhardt, whose wild colors and animated brushwork rendered a still life comprising a riotous lineup of cleaning products and domestic goods.
Starting in April, the landscaped expanse of the High Line park stretching from Gansevoort Street (near the Whitney Museum of American Art) and 34th Street on Manhattan’s west side, will play home to three large-scale commissions.
Patricia Ayres will present an installation of sculptures that “resemble a patchworked-cadaver version of a dress form,” per a press release, in ways that reference the New York–based artist’s “upbringing in the Catholic church, women’s fashion standards, and the carceral system.”
Ximena Garrido-Lecca, who splits her time between Mexico City and Lima, Peru, will show a nine-foot corn cob water fountain rendered in bronze n. The work alludes to corn’s legacy as a cherished crop and global commodity, and—by way of colored water that takes on a neon yellow hue—references a toxic herbicide that has done damage to the environment and human health.
Lastly, Derek Fordjour will show painted bronze sculptures of Black figures including a boxer and a waiter to accompany his mural Backbreaker Double (which premiered in December). As the release describes, “Fordjour positions sportsmanship and service work as forms of performanceship and as an assertion of individual agency and a demand for endurance.”
In addition, the High Line Channel—which shows videos in a rotating schedule in the park around 14th Street—will show three works by Saba Khan, as well as Fantasy Futbol, a grouping of three films by Marianna Simnett, Filip Kostic, and Ana Hušman that consider soccer as a global phenomenon.
In a statement, Alemani—High Line Art’s director and chief curator, who has also curated high-profile exhibitions including the 2022 Venice Biennale—said, “With each new commission and each artist’s unique way of interpreting the world we live in and shape, I learn so much, from topics as wide-ranging yet still connected as the human body, agriculture, and cultural expression.”
