Inspired by the University of Pittsburgh’s inaugural Collecting Knowledge Pittsburgh Workshop, Race-ing the Museum held in 2016, contributors writing from diverse perspectives and disciplines raise questions about access, inclusion, institutional structures, and representation.
Kirk Savage and Shirin Fozi reflect on the experience of Race-ing the Museum over two years later and in the midst of the Trump presidency.
Caitlin Frances Bruce examines the potential of public art to reignite community through her co-organization of the Hemispheric Conversations: Urban Art Project (HCUAP).
Nik Cristobal puts forward a new epistemological model for education, Kanaka ‘Ōiwi Critical Race Theory, based on Kanaka ‘Ōiwi (Native Hawaiian) language and principles.
Héctor Camilo Ruiz Sánchez, Paulina Pardo Gaviria, Rosa De Ferrari, Kirk Savage, and Patricia Documet reflect on their project OjO Latino, a collaborative Photovoice project demonstrating presence of Pittsburgh’s growing Latino community.
Christiana Harkulich examines museum performance as a decolonial strategy exemplified by White Indian, a performance by artist Gregg Deal (Pyramid Lake Paiute) from 2016.
Nicole F. Scalissi explores the “other border wall,” an artistic response to President Trump’s proposed border wall, conceptualized and led by Jenn Meridan and other artists as J.M. Design Studios.
Including artist portfolios from: Hazel Batrezchavez, Aaron Henderson, Meghan Kozal, Cecelia Ivy Price, Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez, and Nick Simko
Including book and exhibition reviews by: Lily Brewer, Rebecca L. Giordano, Annika Johnson, Jacqueline Lombard, Benjamin Ogrodnik, Paulina Pardo Gaviria, and Golnar Yarmohammad Touski
Future issue: Vol. 8. “Yesterday’s Contemporaneity: Finding Temporality in the Past.”
The forthcoming issue of Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture asks what it means to be in time. The term “contemporaneity” is often invoked in reference to experience of the current moment. Volume 8 seeks to publish examinations of contemporaneity across a wider variety of historical contexts. The aim is to uncover how cultures throughout the global past have negotiated temporalities, modernities, and historicisms, in order to come to terms with what it means to be present in their own moment. How can both history and modernity be visualized, contextualized, or conceptualized to create a sense of contemporaneity? How have institutions created temporalities for the cultures they study, and how can a historical object or space shape perceptions of a culture’s identity or agency? What is at stake in defining a work of art’s place in time?
About the journal
Contemporaneity is an open access journal that publishes scholarly and artistic explorations of how the complexities of being in the world have found visual form throughout time. Based in the Department of History of Art & Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, the journal emerges from the Department’s innovative constellations program. We publish idea-driven research that resonates across disciplines, while interrogating diverse visual material from across time using multiple methods.
To make a submission, visit contemporaneity.pitt.edu, click Register and create an Author profile to get started. Proposals for book and exhibition reviews, interviews, or other scholarly contributions will also be considered, and we recognize that these submissions may take many forms.
Proposals and questions can be directed to the editors at contemporaneityjournal [at] gmail.com.
