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The High Line has hosted forests, billboards, giant pigeons and enough public art to fill a small museum. Its newest resident, however, may be the flashiest yet: a monumental golden “snake” curling through the park in the Meatpacking District.
Bulgari has unveiled auruBOROS—Urban Memory and Collective Dream, a 33-foot pneumatic sculpture created by Berlin-based art and architecture duo Plastique Fantastique. The free installation is now open above Little West 12th Street, near The Standard, High Line, and will remain on view through September 20.
The work resembles a gleaming serpent or double helix, with massive coils rising from beneath the elevated park and wrapping around its concrete supports. Visitors can walk among and through the reflective forms, which shift in appearance as sunlight, shadows and passing New Yorkers bounce off the metallic surface.
The sculpture’s name combines aurum, the Latin word for gold, with ouroboros, the ancient image of a serpent eating its own tail. Its location also fits the installation’s themes of memory and transformation: the High Line, after all, turned an abandoned freight railway into one of the city’s most popular public spaces.
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Created by Plastique Fantastique artists Marco Canevacci and Yena Young, auruBOROS is Bulgari’s first public art installation in the United States. The duo is known for large-scale inflatable environments, including a giant ring that encircled a Paris footbridge during Nuit Blanche in 2023 and an immersive installation at the 2019 Venice Biennale.
The piece is the latest stop in Bulgari’s Serpenti Infinito series, which has previously appeared in Shanghai, Seoul and Mumbai. The project considers how the luxury house’s snake motif (first introduced into Bulgari jewelry back in the 1940s) can be reinterpreted by contemporary artists in different cities.
The New York debut received a suitably sparkly send-off on Wednesday night, when Anne Hathaway, Dua Lipa, Lisa, Joey King and Hudson Williams gathered around the sculpture. The party later migrated upstairs to Boom at The Standard for DJ sets by Kaytranada, Mona Matsuoka and Gjin Lipa, plus a performance by Andra Day.
You may not get the celebrity-packed reception, but the golden serpent itself is open to everyone, free of charge. Catch it before it sheds the High Line on September 20.