StepSister Press

Museums Are Dead. They fell victim to torch-bearing mobs, looters, and the vociferous contempt of political and religious groups. But perhaps also through insular pedagogies, inequitable practices, and a lack of representation or transparency, museums contributed to their own demise. In our current social climate, it has become critical that we, as students, teachers, employees and participants of the museum, reflect on our roles within the white marble walls of the establishments we hold dear. The articles in the following pages represent the curiosity, research, perspective and tenacity required to lay the old museum, to rest in order to allow the new museum to thrive. Together we imagine a future for these institutions untethered from the colonial ties that bind them today. We address the difficult histories of the museum whose past has been marred with racism, sexism, classism, and questionable ethics. In this issue, museum practitioners tackle topics such as repatriation and inequitable labor practices through analysis of media and artifacts. Together we imagine the museum not as a lost cause, but as an opportunity to grow, to learn and to change. Long live museums.

Language matters / Javairia Shahid -- Welcome / Floating Museum -- Introduction / Sarita Hernández -- Value of Small Things -- The Society of Smallness : a brief history / Georgina Valverde -- Life in miniature : an ode to the Thorne Rooms / Elizabeth Lalley -- Fresh Theft : consuming art / Yasmin Zacaria Mitchel -- Small things with great love : an art department-library exhibition initiative / Jane Darcovich -- A conversation by the Loo on small artist-run spaces / Noora Al Balushi with Paul Hopkin and Jeffrey Grauel -- Engagement -- Lift to release / Juan Camilo Guzmán -- Expanding care : curation in the age of engagement / Aletheia Wittman -- Panopitcan't, Structures of power / Silvia Inés Gonzalez -- Small objects, big impact / Laura Phillips -- Marginalization -- The art museum chasm / Marjorie Schwarzer -- Critical narratives of the marginalized / Karen Vidángos -- La Madre Chiquita / William Camargo -- The world in a box / Tim Gorichanaz -- Location -- Compressed, compact, concise, and refined : a museum in Switzerland / Deniz Balik -- Air, water, and earth : lessons on communication from a museum in the mountains / Michelle Dezember -- Open table / Roni Packer -- Hong Kong identity : utilizing the small to challenge the big / Benjamin J. Hruska -- The fine art of reduction : diminishment, distance and Taylor's Panorama of Sydney -- Disturbing histories -- Book review : Museums, Heritage and Indigenous voice : decolonizing engagement / Alexis Mixon -- Selections from Focusing (Vol II) / Alejandro T. Acierto -- Book review : Bone Rooms : from scientific racism to human prehistory in museums / Benjamin L. Locke -- Confronting the holocaust : immersive counter-memorials as sites of collective memory / Lillian Hussong -- The white palace of the west / Jonathan Kelley.

"Museums, like all other social institutions, reflect the tensions and contradictions of their times. The Museum and Exhibition Studies (MUSE) Graduate Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago proposes that museum problems, including declining attendance, homogenous employee and visitor demographics, and inequitable workplaces, and are deeply seeded in the field and its professions and that remedies will require radical reimagining and change. Responding to the urgencies of the moment and recognizing the need to transform museums and our cultural work within their spaces, MUSE offers this new journal. Fwd: Museums signals a desire to lift up and forward ideas that might push our collective thinking about cultural work. This volume explores the theme of inaugurations, or firsts and beginnings, with over 20 contributions from scholars and creative practitioners."--Amazon.

artXposium 2.0 is a book chronicling the development of an annual multimedia art experience in the city of West Chicago. The event artXposium is the brainchild of local resident and internationally shown artist Anni Holm and former registrar of the West Chicago City Museum, Brian Reis. Together with assistant organizer Irene Pérez, many volunteers, and over sixty artists, they created a three-day event in the former Grobe's True Value store, a large space which lent itself to works ranging from painting, sculpture, and photography to interactive installations and video screenings. [from Amazon.com]

A collection of interviews concerning the rampant body dissatisfaction women have, and are expected to have by society.

Airline to Heaven, Part 1 is a companion piece to an animated film by Annie Heckman, and also collects short works by Matthew Dal Santo and Terri L. Russ.