FWD: MUSEUMS: “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?

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.