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 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 [email protected] with inquiries and see Buddy Chicago and Bridge for purchasing. ​

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 Journal 2024 – Upcoming Issue

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.

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. 

Questions? Email us: [email protected]

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Fwd: Museums Journal 2025 - Call for Submissions

Guide To {           }

Are you surviving the colonial institutions in place? Are you seeking liberation? Are you boycotting companies that support union busting and genocide? Are you uncomfortable in museums? What is your guide to navigating museums and museum-adjacent spaces? The 2025 Fwd: Museums publication is calling for submissions and is welcoming artwork, resources, interviews, reviews, poetry, and other works on topics related to surviving and navigating cultural institutions. 

At Fwd: Museums, we seek to create an alternative space for museum workers, artists, and writers to find shelter and to speak up against the racist and colonial museum culture that currently exists. For its 10th issue, Fwd: Museums is creating a guide for museum victims to explore a variety of issues within museum positions such as “Guide To {Visitor Experience}” or “Guide To {Conservation & Archives}.” The publication aims to develop a helpful resource for everyone to navigate the museum’s colonial practices. Expose, name, and take apart museum violence and share your guide to surviving in these spaces. Fwd: Museums seeks candid experiences and stories, therefore, submissions will have the option of being published anonymously. 

Guide To {                }
                   {Visitor Experience}
                   {Exhibitions}
                   {Directors & Development}
                   {Conservation & Archives}
                   {Human Resources}
                   {Security}
                   {...}

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 tenth issue’s theme, “Guide To {                }.”

Please head over to our submissions page for detailed information on the theme, entry guidelines, and the submission form!    Deadline Jan. 5, 2025, 11:59 PM

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