Gen Z has recently reclaimed the word “aura” — Walter Benjamin’s term for the strange presence exerted by a work of art — to refer to some intangible “it” factor some people possess. Fitting, given that our featured piece today takes on the question of whether works of art can have personhood. Lisa Siraganian draws on everything from the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision that deemed corporations people to Pierre Huyghe's uncanny human "statues."Speaking of artworks with personhood, Ed Simon takes on the Renaissance painter Hans Holbein the Younger, who painted the human like no one before and since.
In classic Ed Simon fashion, his review of scholar Elizabeth Goldring’s new book is an excellent primer on the artist if you’re less familiar, and a complete recasting for even the most schooled academic. Plus, the incomparable Michael Glover introduces us to Whistlejacket, a "magnificent, rampant beast"; Scrub, a bay horse with a royal pedigree; and many other amazing equine portraits by English Romantic painter George Stubbs, on view at the National Gallery in London. Also today, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, received the largest gift in its history for an endowed program, a peek inside the new Victoria & Albert Museum in East London, and many other goodies below.
Enjoy!—Lisa Yin Zhang, associate editor Robot artist Ai-Da in front of its (or “her”) work (© 2025 Ai-Da Robot Studios via www.ai-darobot.com)Can an Artwork Have Personhood?Many of us yearn for intimate, almost human interactions with art objects. But the risks might outweigh the rewards. | Lisa Siraganian SPONSORED Byron Kim: A Little Deepness at James Cohan’s 48 Walker Street GalleryA Little Deepness brings together early large-scale skyscapes, which illuminate the roots of Byron Kim’s practice in the interplay between looking and memory, with a year of his Sunday Paintings series. By turns intimate and universal, they chronicle Kim’s lived experience in which clouds, children’s milestones, political upheavals, and personal reckoning share the same quietly radiant surface.
Learn more NewsStudents sketching Gerard Soest’s “Lady Borlase” at the Figge Art Museum in Iowa (photo courtesy National Gallery of Art)A historic $116M gift to the National Gallery of Art (NGA) will endow a new artwork lending program. In its pilot year, the initiative reached an estimated 900,000 visitors across 10 institutions in the United States.FeatureThe new V&A East building with outdoor sculpture by Thomas J Price (photo Naomi Polonsky/Hyperallergic)Can the V&A’s New Museum Fulfill Its Democratic Promise?In contrast with the institution’s behemoth architecture, its recently unveiled East London branches seem built on a human scale. | Naomi Polonsky SPONSORED The International Center of Photography Presents Photobook FestThis year’s fest will feature over 80 publishers with a full weekend of workshops, panels, and book signings.
May 8–10 in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Learn more From Our CriticsHolbein, “Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve (The Ambassadors)” (1533) (photo courtesy Yale University Press)Hans Holbein Painted the HumanHe surpassed all of his colleagues in the sheer depth, visceral intimacy, and empathy conveyed in his renderings of nobles, aristocrats, and thinkers. | Ed SimonTale of a Riderless HorseWhen George Stubbs paints a horse, it comes alive. | Michael GloverCommunityDesmond Morris on October 15, 1990, in Paris (photo Ulf Andersen/Getty Images)Remembering Desmond Morris, James Hayward, and Flo Oy WongThis week, we honor a surrealist and zoologist, a monochrome abstractionist, and a pillar of Oakland’s Chinatown. | Lisa Yin ZhangICYMIHarry Bertoia photographed on one of his chairs on MAY 26, 1965 (photo Denver Post via Getty Images)Harry Bertoia Gets His MomentAs a sculpture long thought lost resurfaces in Detroit, the artist and designer’s alma mater sets its sights on a major retrospective. | Sarah Rose Sharp