This issue of the Art Institute Review addresses the concept of in situ—a natural, original, or existing position or place. The notion relates to basic questions art historians, conservators, curators, and other cultural heritage professionals ask about all works of art: Where were they installed or exhibited? How were they experienced in their original time and location? To what extent did these initial contexts orient and shape artistic intent? Location and place may change over time. What happens when the physical context of a work of art is interrupted or upended? What are the stakes surrounding its placement and/or displacement? Research and analysis are themselves informed by position and place. How are art historical, conservation, and material science methods shaped in situ? How must they change when addressing a work of art that has been removed from its original context(s)?

Such questions regarding the past, present, and future of artworks have always been important in art history and related disciplines, but they have taken on even greater weight in our particular moment. What does it mean to recontextualize works in new spaces? What happens when we privilege one point in an artwork’s history over another—or when we deprioritize or disregard that history? How can digital tools and technologies help us better understand, question, and critique the “place” of art?

The third issue of the Art Institute Review invites you to consider, interrogate, and visualize the concept of in situ, understood broadly. We welcome topics from an expansive geographical, temporal, and theoretical range that could include: archaeological investigation and research, theoretical and practical projects of restitution and decolonization; community-based conservation; site-specific artworks and interventions, Gesamtkunstwerk, and land art projects; digital and material re-creations of artistic sites and architectural settings; and more. We especially welcome proposals focused on historically underrepresented objects or narratives, proposals from emerging scholars, and proposals that optimize the digital platform. Not only is the digital realm itself a place ripe for critical exploration through the theme, but it also supports innovative technological experiments and creative realizations of historic, contemporary, and imagined spaces.

This issue is co-edited by Elizabeth McGoey, Associate Curator of Arts of the Americas, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Jeanne Marie Teutonico, Associate Director of Strategic Initiatives and Publications at the Getty Conservation Institute.

For more information and to access a submission link please visit the external link below.