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You are receiving Construction Paper, a biweekly Saturday newsletter on design and architecture by Kriston Capps, as part of the CityLab Daily.

Monuments are making news again — and for once, it's the statues going up that are grabbing headlines, not the ones toppling down.

Late in January, a mystical sculpture designed by the artist Simone Leigh debuted in a circle in central New Orleans where a Robert E. Lee memorial stood until 2017. "Sentinel (Mami Wata)" depicts a serpent winding around a spoonlike figure. The figure is Mami Wata or "La Sirene," a water deity in African and Diaspora traditions, although to many Americans it might read like a Black female version of the Greek rod that symbolizes medicine and healing.

In New York, a memorial of sorts to the late US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg designed by artist Shahzia Sikander took pride of place atop a state courthouse alongside statues of Moses, Confucius and Zoroaster. Sikander's "NOW" is a looser depiction than those in other statues: Her figure features Ginsburg's iconic lace collar but also braided horns for hair, tendrils for arms and a lotus flower for a base. "Witness," the statue's monstrous twin, was installed in nearby Madison Square Park.

The "Witness" statue at Madison Square Park. Photographer: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

People must be thrilled to talk about something new in public art, not just tired old Confederate statues, right? No, of course not. Where are you from?

In a tweet, The New York Times's Ross Douthat described Leigh's African statue as "notable and spiritually-resonant" — a snarlingly sarcastic compliment, to be clear. Not one to leave it alone at that, Douthat expanded his art-critical barbs into a full-length column on the dangers of mysticism. It's a literal reading of these statues: Douthat describes Sikander's RBG-ish statue on feminine power as "an appropriation of Christian images of the demonic in a statue that stands against the politics of conservative Christianity," for example.

Piling on, Rod Dreher writes in The American Conservative that these statues are signs that America is embracing full-blown pagan psychonautics. "Let's not pretend that this sculpture is merely about putting a defiant finger in the face of white supremacy," he writes, of the Leigh statue replacing the Lee statue. "It is about the proclamation of a new religious and political order."

Reacting to this overreaction, some further to the left took a victory lap. Example tweet: "NYC is back, and we're doing the things that matter: owning the Roman statue avatar guys." Although it's not like conservatives are the only people griping about public art. A new Boston monument to Martin Luther King Jr and Coretta Scott King crossed partisan lines by sending everyone's minds diving for the gutter.

Still, it's a little odd that these particular statues aren't landing better with conservatives. Sure, they include a pagan goddess or two. But these are solid, figurative statues, with a foundation in craft and symbolism. Art in general is in a small-c conservative place, with tastemakers turning away from the formal abstract and minimalist modes that have dominated gallery walls for more than half a century. Naturalistic work is ascendant, and so is "de-skilled" craft that looks untrained or even naive. "Reject modernity, embrace tradition" is a motto that could describe both reactionary cultural populism and elite contemporary art.

One arrival in public art that stands out as truly conservative — if that's the word for it — is New York's so-called "mini-Bean." The new artwork at the base of the jenga-tower 56 Leonard is a cousin to Anish Kapoor's globally famous "Cloud Gate" in Chicago, the magical place-making sculpture that has drawn millions of selfie-seeking tourists to Millennium Park.

New York's "mini-Bean." Photographer: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images North America

New York's half-bean feels half-baked: a disappointing imitation for the city and a franchise play by the artist. For New York to install the lesser version of a Chicago icon reeks of second-city status. And while the original sculpture is still a treasure, the second iteration feels like a monument from 20 years ago — because it is.

That public art is once again cause for dunking on political opponents and other cities is great news for monuments, mind you. If everybody's talking about it and nobody's happy with it, then public art is back. Just don't be on the statue's wrong side.

-Kriston Capps

London is getting a High Line. A three-quarter mile stretch of elevated track will be converted into a park amenity called the Camden Highline. As Feargus O'Sullivan reports, the project is so similar in scope to the Manhattan version that they even share the same designer, James Corner Field Operations. (Camden Highline Brings NYC-Style Rail Park to London)

In more news from London, the city's historic Smithfield Market will reopen as a museum about the city and food hall, a big shift for Central London as well as for the city's wholesalers. (London's Historic Smithfield Market Meets a New Chapter)

Buildings were renovated, and CityLab looked at them: Aaron Clark checks in on a Brooklyn warehouse-turned-theater that combines new and old timber, and a careful renovation of a Los Angeles academic building designed by the modernist master Paul Revere Williams. (Look at That Building)

A trio of architects dreamed up what a new Penn Station for New York could look like if Madison Square Garden, which stands over the current facility, were relocated, with visions that include a ghostly glass shell in the shape of the Garden as well as a literal garden over the station. Yet the approach preferred by the preservation group and host for this fantasy forum is even more far out, as Sri Taylor reports: It involves meticulously rebuilding the original 1910 Penn Station building. (What Should a New Penn Station Look Like?)

Midjourney has emerged as the AI art generator of choice for architects looking to make bonkers sketches. As Gaelle Faure reports, some of these fantastical designs could even result in built structures, including an "AI-encouraged" pavilion for Chicago's North Shore area. But there are limitations to what AI can do: Machine-learning tools trained on public images don't know what to make of prompts for non-Western designs. (The Architects Designing Surreal Worlds with AI)

For a new office building in Dallas, Cunningham Architects turned a tight budget into a virtue, designing an unlikely wedge for just over $200 per square foot. (The Dallas Morning News)
Cooper Union postponed a design exhibition on the Soviet design school Vkhutemas, prompting an outcry from architects across the US. (The Architect's Newspaper)
Balkrishna Doshi, the great modernist architect who worked alongside Le Corbusier and Louis Khan, died at 95. (The New York Times)

Postmodern stalwart Michael Graves Architecture makes its third merger in a year with the acquisition of Walter Robbs Callahan and Pierce Architects. (Architect)
The National Air and Space Museum is hosting a competition for architecture students and early-career architects to design part of the planned Bezos Learning Center. (Smithsonian)
Lee Bey is hosting a new doc on the architecture of Chicago's South Side, which airs on Feb. 6. (WTTW)