Bvlgari’s Golden Serpent Takes the High Line

01A Serpent Built From Air

Two intertwined pneumatic coils appear to rise from beneath The Standard before threading through the High Line’s concrete structure. Ventilators keep the golden mirrored TPU forms inflated, allowing a work of architectural scale to remain remarkably light. The installation measures about 98 by 33 by 33 feet. Its modular spirals could extend roughly 430 feet if arranged in a straight line, according to the artists. Visitors can walk beneath and between the coils and see the city ripple across their reflective skin.

02Gold, Motion and Memory

The title joins aurum, the Latin word for gold, with the ouroboros, the ancient image of a serpent consuming its own tail. Canevacci and Young broke open that traditionally closed circle and let it move through the site as an unfinished body. Sunlight, weather, traffic and passing visitors continually alter the mirrored surface. That responsiveness gives physical form to the installation’s subtitle: urban memory is held for a moment, then replaced by the city’s next collective image.

03Serpenti Reaches New York

The commission is Bvlgari’s first public art installation in the United States and the New York chapter of Serpenti Infinito, an international project that asks artists to reinterpret the house’s serpent emblem through different cultures and cities. The program began in Shanghai in 2023 and continued in Seoul and Mumbai in 2025. In Manhattan, Serpenti shifts from jewelry scale to public architecture while retaining the ideas of renewal, movement and transformation associated with the motif.

04Five High Jewelry Works

Bvlgari also unveiled five one-of-a-kind Serpenti creations shaped by American art and architecture. The transformable Serpenti Falling Drops necklace translates the energy of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings into suspended color. The Serpenti Flag necklace and matching bracelet draw on Jasper Johns’s flag imagery with tanzanite, coral, onyx and diamonds. Serpenti Ocean Deco channels the color and geometry of Miami Beach, while the transformable Serpenti Helix necklace follows the ascending spiral of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum.

05Tubogas and a Minaudière

Three new Serpenti Tubogas designs—a single-coil bracelet, earrings and a twisting brooch—extend the flexible metal technique that introduced the first Serpenti bracelet-watch in 1948. Each is finished with pavé diamonds and onyx eyes. A serpent-head minaudière, first developed with Mary Katrantzou in 2021 and inspired by a 1968 Serpenti Harlequin watch, hangs from a Cobra chain. Its engraved or hand-enameled scales come in black, Smeraldo Prezioso, Feroza Turquoise, Royal Ruby and Flash Diamond, with crystal eyes and a concealed clasp that recalls Bvlgari’s 1950s Misteriosi secret watches.

06A Fashion Week Opening

The September 9 preview brought Anne Hathaway, Dua Lipa, Lisa, Joey King and Hudson Williams to the High Line. Hathaway wore the transformable Serpenti Falling Drops necklace, while Dua Lipa wore Serpenti Helix. The celebration later moved to Boom at The Standard for DJ sets by Mona Matsuoka, Kaytranada and Gjin Lipa, followed by a performance from Andra Day. The five high-jewelry works were subsequently presented at Bvlgari’s Fifth Avenue boutique.

07The Artists Behind It

Plastique Fantastique is the Berlin studio of Marco Canevacci and Yena Young. Their temporary, air-supported environments sit between sculpture and architecture and are designed to change how a familiar place is perceived. Earlier projects include RINGdeLUXE, which encircled a Paris footbridge for Nuit Blanche in 2023, and Blurry Venice, an inflatable environment presented during the 2019 Venice Biennale. In New York, their open loop is calibrated to the High Line’s structure, wind and pedestrian flow.