Iván Argote, Dinosaur, 2024 (rendering). A High Line Plinth commission. On view October 2024— Spring 2026. Images courtesy of the artist and the High Line.
The High Line Plinth commission is back, and this year’s edition honours one of NYC’s unofficial mascots – the humble pigeon.
Colombian artist Iván Argote’s monumental High Line installation Dinosaur will feature a 16-ft-tall hyper-realistic common pigeon. Cast in aluminium and hand-painted, it will sit atop a 5-ft-high concrete plinth designed to mimic the city’s sidewalks and buildings, where around 4 million pigeons live alongside New York’s 8 million human residents.
Pigeons are the oldest domesticated birds on record, appearing in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics over 5,000 years ago. Kept as pets, and used for communication, they were brought to the United States in the 1700s and were released into the wild, where their numbers swelled.
‘The name Dinosaur makes reference to the sculpture’s scale and to the pigeon’s ancestors who millions of years ago dominated the globe, as we humans do today…’ explains Argote. ‘[T]he name also serves as a reference to the dinosaur’s extinction. Like them, one day we won’t be around anymore, but perhaps a remnant of humanity will live on—as pigeons do—in the dark corners and gaps of future worlds. I feel this sculpture could generate an uncanny feeling of attraction, seduction, and fear among the inhabitants of New York.‘
By highlighting the pigeon’s origins, Argote reminds viewers that, to some degree, everyone is an immigrant: even the pigeon, a New York fixture.
Dinosaur is the fourth High Line Plinth commission and will be installed above 10th Avenue from October until spring 2026. Argote is the youngest artist to win the commission and the first from the global south. Previous commissions include a neon pink tree by Pamela Rosenkranz (on view until September 2024) and a sixteen-foot-tall bronze bust of a Black woman by Simone Leigh, named Brick House.
