Karma (23 ft, Do Ho Suh) Besthoff Sculpture Garden

Ninety-eight human figures stack into one brushed stainless steel tower, 23 feet high, in the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Karma is by the Korean artist Do Ho Suh. According to the design site Gessato, a striding figure at the base holds up the other 97, who squat and cover the eyes of the one below.

NOMA's collection record dates the work to 2011 and lists it as a museum purchase, with funds from Dorothy B. Skau and a gift of the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Foundation. It gives the height as 276 inches, about 23 feet, in brushed stainless steel on a stone base. Art21 captioned the piece 2012 and reported in March 2013 that it had recently travelled 1,300 miles from the Polich Tallix foundry in New York to the museum, where it was installed as part of the permanent collection. Art21 describes the cast and metal sintered figures as descending in size from bottom to top. In 2019 NUVO described a tower of repeated human figures that together resemble a spinal column, and Gessato calls the work a visual representation of karmic connection.