Fwd: Museums 2026 - Call for Submissions
Afterlives (Issue #11)
What does it mean to be alive? To be dead? To exist in a state beyond?
An afterlife can be a refusal, it can be the archive’s inability to forget, the museum’s struggle to unmake itself, the artifact that resists its own display. An afterlife can be a haunting, a presence that insists, a structure that lingers past its collapse. An afterlife can be a release, an object freed from the logic that once defined it, a collection finding life in new hands, a museum breaking apart to make space for something unimagined.
This issue considers afterlives as sites of potential futures, of transformation, of uneasy continuities. What is the afterlife of a museum that has declared itself decolonized; does it free itself? How might it live against the notions that many histories cannot be undone? What does it mean for an archive to carry traces of what was never meant to be remembered? (What are the afterlives of looted objects: do they return, do they belong, do they remain displaced even when placed back?) What forms of autonomy emerge in ghostly persistence? How does something, once presumed dead, begin again?
This issue seeks to explore the afterlives of museums, objects, and histories, exploring the ways they persist, transform, or dissolve after rupture. We invite contributions that interrogate the life that follows pillage, the legacies that outlive revolution, and the hauntings that shape the present.
Produced and edited by the University of Illinois 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.
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. We strongly encourage book and exhibition reviews on multiple topics, but require all other submissions to connect to the 11th issue’s theme, “Afterlives.”
Deadline: January 5, 2026, 11:59 PM (CST).
Submit here.
Questions? Email [email protected].
Find us on Instagram @fwd_museums
Guidelines
Written submissions (other than poetry and more artistic submissions) 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. We welcome long-form museum, exhibition, film, and book reviews with a point of view and connections to social, historical, political, and other contexts. Check our Instagram for books available for review.
Who Should Submit?
Anyone! You! 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.
Please see the Manuscript and Style Guide on our website for information on how to format your submission.
Afterlives (Issue #11)
What does it mean to be alive? To be dead? To exist in a state beyond?
An afterlife can be a refusal, it can be the archive’s inability to forget, the museum’s struggle to unmake itself, the artifact that resists its own display. An afterlife can be a haunting, a presence that insists, a structure that lingers past its collapse. An afterlife can be a release, an object freed from the logic that once defined it, a collection finding life in new hands, a museum breaking apart to make space for something unimagined.
This issue considers afterlives as sites of potential futures, of transformation, of uneasy continuities. What is the afterlife of a museum that has declared itself decolonized; does it free itself? How might it live against the notions that many histories cannot be undone? What does it mean for an archive to carry traces of what was never meant to be remembered? (What are the afterlives of looted objects: do they return, do they belong, do they remain displaced even when placed back?) What forms of autonomy emerge in ghostly persistence? How does something, once presumed dead, begin again?
This issue seeks to explore the afterlives of museums, objects, and histories, exploring the ways they persist, transform, or dissolve after rupture. We invite contributions that interrogate the life that follows pillage, the legacies that outlive revolution, and the hauntings that shape the present.
Produced and edited by the University of Illinois 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.
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. We strongly encourage book and exhibition reviews on multiple topics, but require all other submissions to connect to the 11th issue’s theme, “Afterlives.”
Deadline: January 5, 2026, 11:59 PM (CST).
Submit here.
Questions? Email [email protected].
Find us on Instagram @fwd_museums
Guidelines
Written submissions (other than poetry and more artistic submissions) 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. We welcome long-form museum, exhibition, film, and book reviews with a point of view and connections to social, historical, political, and other contexts. Check our Instagram for books available for review.
Who Should Submit?
Anyone! You! 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.
Please see the Manuscript and Style Guide on our website for information on how to format your submission.
