Eighty-five years after Walter Benjamin theorized the aura in the work of art, how do we understand that “strange weave of space and time” in an era of digital connection, when art seems to be everywhere and nowhere at once? Join students at the Rhode Island School of Design as we explore the life and the afterlife of the aura as it resurfaced, transformed, and disappeared during the volatile period after the Second World War, in which a new generation of artists reimagined the possibilities of the avant-garde and its ability to transform society.

Into the Aura is a podcast created by students in the Spring 2021 art history seminar “Neo-Vanguards,” taught by Professor Sean Nesselrode Moncada at the Rhode Island School of Design.