Atop the Manhattan Appellate Courthouse sit several lawgivers, Moses, Confucius, and Zoroaster. Carved of marble, these panjandrums of justice compliment the stone-colored edifice of the courthouse perfectly. Completed in 1899, the beautiful building has been described as “an ivory casket among boxes of ordinary maple.”

It truly is becoming.

But now, a new statue has joined the ranks of history’s finest lawgivers, and beholders are incensed.


For starters, the sculpture, named “NOW,” is gold. Consequently, it looks jarringly out of place on a white marble structure. But it is the figure’s almost demonic appearance that has viewers most unsettled.

“With gnarled, tentacular roots in place of arms and feet and parted hair twisted into spiraling ram horns, the figure assumes a fluid, autonomous energy rooted in natural and mystical power,” wrote one reporter.

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As if that wasn’t confusing enough, the original artist, Shahzia Sikander, chimed in to help clear things up. “NOW” “emerges out of the seat of a lotus,” she wrote. “The lotus, with its plethora of meanings and abstract ideas, is symbolic of a deeper truth beyond its form, alluding to perception as illusion. Popular in images in many cultures, it also expresses intangible ideas of humility, awakening, and clarity. The invisible roots of the lotus that lie below the depth of the water are echoed in the roots of the feminine figure. Its form, a circular bloom, with its petals within petals formation, refers to the microcosm and macrocosm in its arabesque, iconographical value.”

She continues: “The female body has a face with its hair braided into spiraling ‘horns.’ The horns mimic the movement of the arms and are there as a symbol of the figure’s sovereignty, and its autonomy. Women in my work are always complex, proactive, confident, intelligent and in their playful stances connected to the past in imaginative ways without being tied to a heteronormative lineage or conventional representations of diaspora and nation.”

Oh, I get it now. The naked, golden, horned lady loitering around Manhattan represents a deeper truth beyond its form.

And something about iconographical value.

The genius of modern art!

Sarcasm aside, Sikander’s dictum on the “paradox of rootedness” may be laughably arcane, but the statue made in its image is simply unbecoming.

In addition to its freakish design, the figure’s horns evoke satanic imagery. “NOW’s” only clothing, a lace collar, is a deliberate nod to the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG).

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“With Ginsburg’s death and the reversal of Roe, there was a setback to women’s constitutional progress,” the artist wrote. She explained that her effigy is a tribute to the “indefatigable spirit of… women” in the fight for abortions. According to the New York Times, “the work was called “NOW” because it was needed “now,” at a time when women’s reproductive rights were under siege after the U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned the constitutional right to abortion.”

So, not only is this golden idol unsightly, but it also celebrates abortion, an abortion icon, and Satan.

And it sits on a government courthouse, right next to Moses.

Ironically, the Manhattan Appellate Courthouse was born out of the City Beautiful Movement, an 1890s renaissance of aestheticism. If only the structure’s original architect, James Brown Lord, had known his work would one day be defiled with an atrocious tribute to the slaughter of the unborn!

Ultimately, “NOW” is a sobering tribute to how far America has fallen. The contrast could not be clearer. From a nationwide attempt to make our cities more beautiful… to delighting in degradation, death, and demonic displays.

Add it to the ever-growing list of reasons to resist the Left: “progressives” are bound and determined to destroy our nation, our cities, and even our art.

Jakob Fay is a staff writer for the Convention of States Project, a project of Citizens for Self-Governance.

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