Located at the top of the Channel Gardens off of 5th Avenue, Rockefeller Center yesterday unveiled Vertical Highways V03 (2025), a monumental new sculpture by Bettina Pousttchi. On view at the historic retail promenade connecting 5th Avenue to The Rink from March 19 through April 17, 2026, this is the first time a sculpture from the Vertical Highways series will be shown to the public in the United States, following presentations in Paris at the Jardin des Tuileries; a permanent installation in Berlin in front of the Berlin Central Station; and in front of the Istanbul Modern Museum in Istanbul. The exhibition offers an opportunity to experience one of the artist’s largest sculptures in one of New York’s most iconic public spaces.
“By installing my sculpture in front of Rockefeller Center, I want to initiate a dialogue of art and architecture that resonates with the urban history of New York City,” shares Pousttchi.
Pousttchi (born 1971 in Mainz, Germany) has been realizing large-scale sculptures in public spaces and monumental site-specific installations for building facades for more than 15 years, referencing the architectural, social, and cultural implications of their respective settings.
This sculpture is made from guardrails, which the artist has transformed and arranged into a new composition. For several years, Pousttchi has used objects in her sculptures that structure the physical experience of the urban space, including crowd barriers, street bollards, and guardrails. By applying techniques like bending, pressing, or changing their color, Pousttchi relieves these everyday objects of their regulatory function and detaches them from their context of meaning, transforming them into symbols of change, fluidity, and dissolving boundaries. With her serial use of the source material, the artist conceptually draws on Minimal Art as well as on Marcel Duchamp‘s ready-mades.
“Bettina Pousttchi’s Vertical Highways V03 transforms the language of infrastructure into a striking visual experience, says EB Kelly, Head of Rockefeller Center and Senior Managing Director, Tishman Speyer. “Public art has long been central to Rockefeller Center’s identity, and this installation continues that tradition in a way that feels both contemporary and deeply connected to our architectural heritage. We’re proud to share this work with everyone who visits Rockefeller Center.”
Installation photo by Guillaume Ziccarelli; Headshot by Norman Konrad.
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