Fwd: Museums Journal strives to create a space for challenging, critiquing, and fostering new futures for cultural production within and outside of museums. 

​Fwd: Museums Journal is produced and edited by graduate students from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Its home is UIC's Museum and Exhibition Studies Program and it is published by Chicago-based StepSister Press. 

Email fwd.museums@gmail.com with inquiries and see the "Issues" tab for purchasing information.  

A Museology that is not life-oriented is not worthy;
All the memories are kept in our bodies;

Our museological practice involves affection, fraternity, reciprocity, love, joy and poetry... "

Córdoba Declaration, XVIII International Movement for a New Museology (MINOM) Conference, Córdoba/Argentina, 2017 

Death To Museums 2019
 available now!
See Issues tab to purchase.

Death To Museums is a call for disruption. It is a call to action and proclaims the need for change. This issue asks:

Do museums need to change to avoid their death? Do museums need to die in order to change?

Death To Museums is an alert that cultural institutions held in public trust are at risk and need protection. It is an acknowledgment that museums are active battlegrounds in our deepening cultural conflicts. It is a threat that things will be different from now on. 

Museums are dead. Long live museums.

Thoughts?
​Share at deathtomuseums.com

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                       Cover art by Ted Kim

Call for Submissions 2021

Art by Rosie Waniak

Fwd: Museums - In Transit 2021 Submission Form 

Crossing borders, emigrating, immigrating, 
 
Electing, impeaching, deposing,
 
Evolving.
 
We are always in transit. In a constant state of transition. All moving together yet disparately, in our own unique ways. Can we embrace the in between, while also striving for a future? What would that look like in our rapidly polarizing world?
 
Cultural spaces are transitory. People, objects, ideas are constantly rotating in and out. Yet museums often feel frozen - in their content, hiring practices, physical architecture. How are museums in transit? Or not? How can this process of transition, of cultural exchange and production, exist within and extend beyond the physical space of the museum? 
 
We encourage any type of submission that explores this theme of “in transit.” Potential topics include: 

• Navigation and way-finding
• Tours
• Immigration | Emigration 
• Displacement
• Movement and care of objects 
• Mobile museums 
• Traveling exhibitions 
• Repatriation 
• Moving through and breaking down trauma, barriers, and binaries 
• Carework
• Reflective spaces
• Admission prices 
• Language -  its evolution, translation, and how it is used in cultural spaces 
• Accessibility
• Social movements
• Alternative spaces
• Graffiti/Public art/Murals
• Art-washing
• Funding/Reputation-washing
• Cleaning house - #MeToo in museums   
• Wage issues/unions 
• Social distancing
• Museums at home 
• Virtual tours 
• Remote Access

​Deadline: January 5, 2021 by 11:59 (CT)

Questions? Email us: fwd.museums@gmail.com


Fwd: Museums invites academic articles, artwork, essays, exhibition/book reviews, creative writing, interviews, poetry, love letters, and other experimental forms to analyze, critique, and make space for new thinking about museums and exhibitions.
​
All submissions should follow the guidelines and relate to the journal’s mission statement (see above). We strongly encourage book and exhibition reviews on multiple topics, but require all other submissions to connect to the sixth issue’s theme, “IN TRANSIT.”

Guidelines
​Written submissions should be between 1,000 and 2,500 words and use Chicago Manual of Style formatting and citations, in a DOCX file.

All images should be sent as separate files (not embedded in text) at 300+ dpi in tiff format. Note in text where images should be inserted and include credit, caption, date of execution, materials used, and dimensions, as appropriate.

A Note on Reviews
Reviews need not directly engage an issue’s theme but should relate to the journal’s mission statement (see below). We welcome long-form museum, exhibition, film, and book reviews with a point of view and connections to social, historical, political and other contexts.

Who Should Submit?
Students, faculty, scholars, museum employees, artists and art handlers, volunteers, part-timers, activists, and other people with something to say about museums, exhibits, and cultural work are welcome to submit.

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