ELEVATED: ART ON THE HIGH LINE, A Book Review

All that said, Elevated: Art on the High Line (published, Monacelli, 2024) comes at just the right time as the organization is celebrating its 15 year anniversary since first opening to the public. The extensive catalogue is edited by Cecilia Alemani and features contributions by Aruna D’Souza, Saidiya Hartman, Sam Durant, Sheila Hicks, and Adrián Villar Rojas, amongst others. 

Beyond the forward, written by Alan van Capelle, the book is divided into sections: Monuments and Monumentality, The Art of Nature, and The Symphony of Belonging. Each delves into the complexities of exhibiting artwork outdoors, political implications, and in a conversation with Sam Durant, “Making the Invisible Visible.” 

Perhaps the latter is where the High Line thrives. It is not very visible from the sidewalk, and because of that, it can feel like a safe space for those seeking refuge from cars and busy sidewalks associated with urbanization. 

Owned by the City of New York, but operated by Friends of the High Line, it has brought museum quality work to the public sphere, as well as free and ongoing programming. On the High Line Arts, Alan van Capelle stated to Cecelia Alemani, “The High Line is created by and for dreamers of every variety and walk of life, and no one dreams like artists do.” 

He continues, “Artists are a central part of our community, our family, and our public audience, and we committed ourselves to lifting their dreams to what is not only a city stage but a global one.” In fact, on any given day and any given season, the High Line reflects a global audience and has become a must for tourists visiting the metropolis. 

In an essay by art and culture writer Aruna D’Souza, she argues that monuments and memory go hand in hand. Referencing Simone Leigh’s bronze sculpture, Brick Lane, that stood over sixteen feet tall and was located at 10th Avenue and 30th Street from 2019-2021, D’Souza recalls that the large female bust was only the second public sculpture in the city commemorating Black women.

She states, “Monuments are assertions of history, of power, of who matters to the current power structures and who doesn’t— even in the case of ‘reparative’ monuments, erected to fill gaps in the public display of history. Public art, as demonstrated by so many works that have been commissioned by High Line Art in recent years, offers these qualities up as it questions, “What counts as history?”

Elevated: Art of the High Line is a comprehensive document of the artworks exhibited across the length of this park over the years, but also functions as a didactic investigation into the importance of this particular stretch of land and its accessibility, bringing art to the public. 

Two artists highlighted in its pages are the aforementioned Adrián Villar Rojas and Sheila Hicks. Both regularly exhibit in the public sphere and use unexpected materials. In a conversation for the book, they tackle ideas of transformative art and work that is meant to erode. 

In this conversation, Villar Rojas shares, “I hypothesize that colonization of space and celestial bodies will radically change our approach to all previous museological fictions, and will generate new ones adapted to this new, amplified context.”

He then inserts a question, “Can anyone imagine another ‘white-general-riding-a-horse’— or any variation of him, like a male astronaut— on a plinth in a plaza?” The art of the High Line, as discussed in this book, delves deeply into reimagining historical notations of urban space as a reflection of a contemporary society. 

It proves that nontraditional spaces, such as this public park, can make a large impact, not only on art history, community gathering, and engagement, but can also take on an active role in how the urban landscape can be part of a larger global dialogue, one that stretches beyond the confines of the East and Hudson rivers that house the island of Manhattan. 

Elevated: Art on the High Line will be published in September; you can preorder it here.

Publisher: Monacelli, A Phaidon Company
Copyright: 2024 Friends of the High Line, Inc.
Edited by Cecilia Alemani