Hillary Clinton Is a Person Too

What you are looking at

A girl with a round face, big saucer eyes and a wide smile stands on a square base, holding a decorated mug in both hands. She wears a simple dress with an embroidered apron. Behind her a boy has climbed onto a small chair to reach over her head, where he holds up a little pointed object, as if crowning her or teasing her. The figures have the rounded, slightly goofy look of the novelty figurines sold in gift shops in the 1970s. Raised letters on the front of the base read: "Hillary Clinton Is a Person Too."

Then there is the scale. What looks like a knick-knack for a shelf stands six feet tall. Jonathan Horowitz made it in 2008 in bonded bronze, a cast of resin mixed with bronze powder, at 72 by 34 by 34 inches.

The artist and the context

Jonathan Horowitz, born in New York in 1966, is known for work that borrows the language of pop culture, advertising and politics to comment on American public life. Hillary Clinton Is a Person Too first appeared in his 2008 exhibition Obama '08, made during the long Democratic primary contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

The caption borrows the format of the joke-and-sentiment figurines of the 1970s, which paired cute characters with slogans. Attached to Clinton's name, the formula becomes pointed. The sculpture evokes the vilification Clinton faced as both a political leader and a powerful woman, and the odd need to remind anyone that she was human at all. The humor is gentle on the surface and uneasy underneath.

Occupy Greenwich

In 2016 the sculpture was shown again in Occupy Greenwich, a survey of Horowitz's work at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center in Greenwich, Connecticut, from May to September 2016. The show, which opened during the presidential election season, gathered work made over Obama's two terms. The figure stood in an interior room, greeting visitors, and at least one critic described it as the cornerstone of the exhibition.

Horowitz told an interviewer at the time that he expected and hoped Clinton would become the next president, and that she remained one of the central figures of the political culture. The election result that November gave the piece a further layer of meaning that the artist could not have planned.

Looking closely

The details are carefully chosen. The mug and apron place the girl in a domestic role; the boy behind her, reaching over her head, controls the scene even while seeming to celebrate her. Enlarged to life size, the figurine's cheerful features become slightly uncanny. The glossy brown surface of the bronze, normally used for public monuments to statesmen and generals, here dignifies a gift-shop joke, and the gap between those two traditions is the work's subject.

For an older use of sculpture to celebrate or question public women, compare the allegorical figures in our famous sculptures guide. Other works by Horowitz on this site include Black Dot Project and We Fight to Build a Free World.

Where to see it

The work has been exhibited in New York and at the Brant Foundation in Greenwich, Connecticut. Its present location is not publicly documented, and it is not on permanent public display.