Fwd: Museums Journal
​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 students at 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, an imprint of Bridge Books.  
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Email fwd.museums@gmail.com with inquiries and see Buddy Chicago and Amazon 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

Fwd: Museums – Call for Submissions 2024

Power/potential

Power:  Having control or authority to dictate or influence people and organizations’ behavior and actions.  ​

Potential: Having the capacity to build or develop a positive outcome in the future.

Power and the potential for power shape the relationships we have between ourselves, our institutions, and our governments. We relate these two words in this issue of Fwd: Museums to highlight how those being unjustly or unfairly treated have the potential to create their own power and invite submissions related to this theme. 

Central Questions: 

• How are museums inherently political spaces?
• Who holds authority in museum spaces? 
• How do governments claim control over museums and other institutions? 
• How do marginalized groups claim leadership in institutions? 
• How do museum exhibits have the potential to act as catalysts for social and political change?

We welcome submissions of artwork, reviews, poetry, and other written work on topics related to Power/Potential. We celebrate interdisciplinarity and welcome a wide range of theoretical frameworks.

Potential topics for submissions may include, but are not limited to:
Institutions:

• Museum hierarchies 
• Work experiences
• Bureaucracy 
• Pay transparency
• Exhibits as catalysts for positive change
• Carceral logic in museums
• Accessibility

Community:

• Protest as power/collective power 
• Museum labor/unionization
• Storytelling
• Cultural preservation and community archiving
• Grassroots movements

State:

• State/national/governmental museums 
• Public museums
• Non-profit industrial complex
• Fascism
• War
• Repatriation
• Reparations
• Prison-industrial complex

Self:

• The privilege of knowledge
• Identity/expression
• Self-empowerment
• Spirituality
• ​Mindfulness

Produced and edited by the University of Illinois at Chicago Museum and Exhibition Studies graduate students and published by Chicago-based, Bridge Books, Fwd: Museums strives to create a space for challenging, critiquing, and providing alternative modes of thinking and production within and outside of museums. 

Deadline: January 5th, 2024 by 11:59 (CT)
Submit art and texts here: forms.gle/tYMg9f1iM5hq2fhp7 

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 ninth issue’s theme, “Power/Potential.”

Guidelines
​Written submissions (other than poetry) should be between 1,000 and 2,500 words and use Chicago Manual of Style formatting and citations, in a DOCX file. Broadly accessible language that a large audience can understand is preferred. 

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 essay reviews with a point of view and connections to social, historical, political, and other contexts. Check our Instagram––@fwd_museums––for books available for review.

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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