Rubin Museum launches free High Line meditation series in New York City

A free monthly lecture and guided meditation series will turn the High Line Spur into a public meditation room, with the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art and the High Line presenting a recurring practice around Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s High Line Plinth commission, The Light That Shines Through the Universe.

The series runs from May through October 2026 and is built to be accessible from the start. That matters in a city where many people are curious about mindfulness but are not attached to a sangha, a retreat center, or a paid wellness program. By making the sessions free and anchoring them in a public setting, the Rubin and the High Line are treating meditation as civic programming, not a boutique class.

Nguyen’s sculpture gives the series its center of gravity. The High Line describes the work as a 30-foot-tall sandstone homage to the Bamiyan Buddhas, the sixth-century Afghan statues destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. The hands are cast from brass artillery shells and arranged in Buddhist mudras, which gives the piece a sharp visual tension between violence, ritual, and compassion. The installation sits on the High Line Spur at 30th Street and 10th Avenue in Manhattan, and the meditation series is part of the public programming meant to help visitors engage more deeply with those themes.

Each installment will pair a lecture from a scholar, artist, or cultural leader with a guided meditation led by an invited practitioner. That format should work for two kinds of people at once: the ones who want the intellectual frame first, and the ones who want a concrete way to settle the mind once they arrive. The first scheduled session, Buddhist Mudras, is set for Saturday, May 16, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., with a lecture by Tashi Chödrön and a guided meditation by Steve Clorfeine, a Shambhala tradition teacher with more than 40 years of experience.

Chödrön brings continuity to the project. The Rubin identifies her as its Himalayan programs and communities ambassador, and she also hosts the museum’s Mindfulness Meditation podcast, a weekly meditation for beginners and skilled meditators alike. That gives the series a familiar voice while extending the Rubin’s existing meditation platform into one of the city’s most visible public art sites.

The sculpture is scheduled to remain on view through fall 2027, so the meditation series will unfold during the installation’s opening months rather than after the moment has passed. That is what makes the format worth watching: it places practice, art, and public space in the same frame, and it does so without charging admission.