Arcane Hand has a lot of text. Among it, it says:
It has a Strength of 26 (+8)
When you cast the spell and as a Bonus Action on your subsequent turns, you can move the hand up to 60 feet and then cause one of the following Effects with it.
Grasping Hand. The hand attempts to grapple a Huge or smaller creature within 5 feet of it. You use the hand's Strength score to resolve the grapple. If the target is Medium or smaller, you have advantage on the check.
It has been established that the caster can use the Arcane Hand as an improvised Fly substitute by having it grapple a creature, then lift that grappled creature by moving the hand up to 60 feet upwards.
The description does speak about grappling a creature only. It strikes me that it would not be able to lift/move any object. Is that correct?
Best Answer
Grappling and moving a creature who fights back needs rules.
The spell description for Bigby's hand spells out how it interacts with creatures because creatures fight back. This is why details provided with Forceful Hand and Grasping Hand are written out, so that you know how well another creature fights back.
Objects don't fight back.
Objects are different from creatures in that objects don't fight back, generally speaking. There is no need to provide detailed rules unique to the spell for moving objects because the hand has a strength score and those rules already exist. We have enough in the spell description to know that the hand can interact with objects:
Bigby's hand mimics the movement of your own hand, and we have rules for how much it can carry, so all you need to do is act out the movements of picking up the object with your own hand, and Bigby will actually pick it up, and you just follow the usual rules for carrying things, using the hand's strength score.
In other words, the same hand that is tangible enough to grab and punch monsters when you make make a fist is tangible enough to punch and grab objects.