Theme: Collections, Collecting, Collectives
The urge to collect predates the development of modern museums. The Wunderkammer, also known as the “Cabinet of Curiosities,” was a practice established in Europe in which collectors could admire the beauty and artistry of foreign artifacts while also exhibiting their wealth and power to society. This model then became the basis for Western museums. These collections became open to the public through collectives gathering and demanding equal space, changing how objects were seen from sites of creation to consumption. Moreover, with the inclusion of the public, collections transformed from a performance of status to a highlighting of personal memorabilia, allowing people to preserve and display what is most important to them. How do we reframe collecting not as an elite pursuit but as a practice integral to our humanity? Collectives gather to admire what stands in pristine cases, that once were part of the earth, made by someone’s hands, and held close to someone’s heart. What begins as an intimate act of gathering soon hardens into structure. Collections emerge not merely as accumulations of objects, but as frameworks that determine what is preserved, displayed, and ultimately remembered.
Collections:
A collection is an accumulation of objects. Cultural institutions and organizations inherit the work of preserving cultural and personal heritage. What responsibilities come with holding, curating, or inheriting a collection? How does collecting build upon these responsibilities? How do they build narrative and tell a story? How do museums portray history through the physical? How do we form relationships with relics?
Collecting:
Collecting is an activity that manifests in auction houses, stores, homes, and streets. Along with histories of physical collections, the importance of oral history creates a sense of unity and oneness with oneself through history. When memory is sustained through people rather than objects, it becomes inherently collective. What are the economic and environmental impacts of collecting? How can collecting become a site of ritual for oneself and others? In the context of collecting, how can spaces such as libraries and personal collections demonstrate ways of life and create a sense of history? How can acts of collecting help preserve traditions in new and distinctive ways?
Collectives:
Collectives make up the core of museums. From administrators and educators to visitors and guests, people are the lifeblood of cultural institutions. Yet, collectivity does not begin or end within museum walls. How does collective action extend beyond institutional frameworks and move into communities, organizing, people-centric networks, and shared cultural labor? How do collectives form through shared objects, tastes, grief, or resistance? How do we interact with various institutions? How can collectives change what is seen and what is obscured? How can collectives be formed and appreciated outside of a central museum space?
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.
For our twelfth issue, we invite contributions and collaborations rooted in reflections on collections across cultural institutions, personal archives, and community-held alike. What does it mean to collect within and beyond systems of capital and curation? How do institutional collections intersect with personal, familial, or grassroots forms of gathering and preservation? What is collective about museums?
Fwd: Museums invites academic articles, artwork, essays, exhibition/book reviews, creative writing, interviews, poetry, rants, love letters, and 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 (bolded above). We strongly encourage book and exhibition reviews on multiple topics, but require all other submissions to connect to the 12th issue’s theme, “Collections, Collecting, Collectives.”
The submission deadline is January 5, 2027, 11:59 PM (CST). Submit your work here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSewSwV6sx0d6mPwX7x6DrYObxj0X1e2WdhB2IVaVeQBzNzVYA/viewform
Questions? Email fwd.museums@gmail.com.
Find us on Instagram @fwd_museums
Guidelines
Written submissions such as essays, research papers, and poems should be between 2,500 – 4,000 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. If you think your submission may exceed 4,000 words, please email us at fwd.museums@gmail.com to discuss the length of your submission.
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 should be between 1,500 – 2,500 words. We welcome long-form museum, exhibition, film, and book reviews with a point of view and connections to social, historical, political, and other contexts, rather than summaries of book contents. We invite creative formats; email us if you’d like examples. Check our Instagram or email us 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 Journal Style and Manuscript Guide for information on how to format your submission.
Contact Information
Dr. Therese Quinn
Museum and Exhibition Studies
University of Illinois Chicago
Contact Email
fwd.museums@gmail.com
URL
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