Special Issues

Arts publishes Special Issues to create collections of papers on specific topics, with the aim of building a community of authors and readers to discuss the latest research and develop new ideas and research directions. Special Issues are led by Guest Editors, who are experts on the topic and all Special Issue submissions follow MDPI's standard editorial process. The journal’s Editor-in-Chief and/or designated Editorial Board Member will oversee Guest Editor appointments and Special Issue proposals, checking their content for relevance and ensuring the suitability of the material for the journal. The papers published in a Special Issue will be collected and displayed on a dedicated page of the journal’s website. Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies and Guest Editor responsibilities can be found here. For any inquiries related to a Special Issue, please contact the Editorial Office.

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Contemporary Visual Culture in Conflict Zones and Contested Territories
edited by Ronit Milano
submission deadline 15 Nov 2025 | 4 articles | Viewed by 5658 | Submission Open
Keywords: contestation; war; visual culture
Active Women in the Art Market: 1950–2020. Mapping Gallerists, Collectors, Maecenas, Auctioneers, Curators in Emerging Markets submission deadline 15 Nov 2025 | 2 articles | Viewed by 5021 | Submission Open
Keywords: art market; Global South; feminism; female studies; women gallerists; women art dealers; women collectors; women artists; women curators; gender equality
Aesthetics in Contemporary Cities submission deadline 30 Nov 2025 | 6 articles | Viewed by 14383 | Submission Open
Keywords: landscapes of urban spaces; public realm aesthetics; aesthetics in the urban context; street art; aesthetics perception
Renaissance Rhapsody: Miscellany and Multimodality in Early Modern Europe
edited by Catharine Ingersoll
submission deadline 30 Nov 2025 | 1 articles | Viewed by 1494 | Submission Open
Keywords: multimodality; interdisciplinarity; Early Modern Europe
Enhancing Roman Wall Painting: Innovative Artisans, Techniques, and Spaces
edited by Lisa Hughes
submission deadline 30 Nov 2025 | Viewed by 438 | Submission Open
Keywords: Roman; wall painting; artists; materials; techniques; visual culture; spatial environments; material culture
(This special issue belongs to the Section Visual Arts)
Social Engagement and Public Art: Discourses and Praxis
edited by and Deniz Ünsal
submission deadline 30 Nov 2025 | Viewed by 355 | Submission Open
Keywords: socially engaged arts; public art; artivism; public engagement; ethics
The European Avant-Garde(s) and Technologies: Unfinished Modernity and the Idea of Tékhnē—the One Hundred Years’ Revolution, 1850–1950
edited by
submission deadline 1 Dec 2025 | Viewed by 874 | Submission Open
Keywords: Té khnē; defamiliarization; experimentalism; metaphoric technology; aesthetic device; biomechanics; humorism; constructivism; performative modernity; technopoetics; poetic Machines; avant-garde infrastructure
Landscape Spoliation
edited by
submission deadline 15 Dec 2025 | Viewed by 1164 | Submission Open
Keywords: productive reuse; botanical and cultural luxuriance; modern and contemporary architecture; environmental design; landscape architecture; urban resilience; lost buildings
Sound, Space, and Creativity in Performing Arts
edited by
submission deadline 27 Dec 2025 | 4 articles | Viewed by 4602 | Submission Open
Keywords: musical acoustics; electroacoustic; sound engineering; music production; digital composition and orchestration; computer music composition; digital audio workstation; sound design; dubbing; digital technologies in music education; auditory image analysis; cognitive science; perception; listening; psychoacoustics; music theory; composition; AI in music
Film Music
edited by Nick Poulakis
submission deadline 31 Dec 2025 | 2 articles | Viewed by 6206 | Submission Open
Keywords: film music; film sound; cinema; musicology; film studies; cultural studies
Restitution Beyond Repatriation: Rethinking African Tangible Heritage in Twenty-First Century Museums
edited by
submission deadline 31 Dec 2025 | 2 articles | Viewed by 1988 | Submission Open
Keywords: restitution; African art; museum; repatriation; decolonization
Artist-Led Practice: Bridging Art and Life
edited by Julie Crawshaw
submission deadline 31 Dec 2025 | Viewed by 516 | Submission Open
Keywords: artist-led practice; John Dewey; aesthetics
Contemporary Development of American Film
edited by Catherine L. Benamou and Philana Payton
submission deadline 2 Jan 2026 | Viewed by 496 | Submission Open
Keywords: biopics; film adaptation; film labor; social justice; independent cinema; exhibition practices; narrative form; queer/trans representation; marginalized filmmakers.; production geographies; race/gender/sexuality
From Craft to Code and Back Again: Rethinking Art, Materiality and Exhibition Practices in the 21st Century
edited by Elena Papadaki and Eleanor Dare
submission deadline 15 Jan 2026 | Viewed by 1512 | Submission Open
Keywords: exhibition practices; materiality; physical/virtual environments; curating; symbiotic networks; contemporary creative practices; new technologies; curating; visual communication
Technology and Scenography in Film and Television: Crafting Visual Worlds
edited by Geraint D'Arcy
submission deadline 26 Jan 2026 | Viewed by 1212 | Submission Open
Keywords: production design; film design; television design; production technologies; aesthetics; virtual production
Arts and Refugees: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (Vol. 3)—the Global South submission deadline 30 Jan 2026 | Viewed by 1296 | Submission Open
Keywords: arts; refugees; global south; inclusion; exclusion; racialization; intersectionality
Dance Objects
edited by and Anna Pakes
submission deadline 31 Jan 2026 | Viewed by 507 | Submission Open
Keywords: dance objects; ontology; materialism; visual culture; commodity; ephemera
Creating Musical Experiences
edited by Róisín Blunnie and Orla Flanagan
submission deadline 27 Feb 2026 | 2 articles | Viewed by 1585 | Submission Open
Keywords: music performance; artistic programming; concert design; curating musical experiences; historical and contemporary performance design; collaborative creativity and performance
Arts of Abolition and Liberation
edited by
submission deadline 28 Feb 2026 | Viewed by 758 | Submission Open
Keywords: abolition; liberation; anti-capitalism; socialism; communism; anarchism; protest; activism; leftism
The Visual Arts and Environmental Regeneration in Britain
edited by Rupert Ashmore
submission deadline 28 Feb 2026 | Viewed by 732 | Submission Open
Keywords: environmental arts; farming; food production; communities; rural economies; arts research; film and photography
(This special issue belongs to the Section Visual Arts)
Presence and Media
edited by Ken Feinstein
submission deadline 28 Feb 2026 | Viewed by 315 | Submission Open
Keywords: presence; new media; otherness; ethics; interaction; dialog
Situating Eurasia in Antiquity: Objects, Places and Interactions in the Western Scythian World
edited by
submission deadline 28 Feb 2026 | Viewed by 275 | Submission Open
Keywords: archaeology; Eurasian nomads; Hallstatt; Hillforts; Iron Age; material culture; Northern Black Sea region; Scythians
Bodies on Edge in a Globalized World
edited by Rebekah J. Kowal and Gerald Siegmund
submission deadline 1 Mar 2026 | Viewed by 462 | Submission Open
Keywords: exile; displacement; dislocation; dispersion; dispossession; embodiment; choreography; dance; performance; global; world
Al-Bustān: Recreational Estates in the Islamic West and Sicily—Architectures and Spaces of Prestige as Symbols of Power
edited by and Julio Navarro Palazón
submission deadline 15 Mar 2026 | 1 articles | Viewed by 7685 | Submission Open
Keywords: Al-Bustān; belvedere; qubba; botanical gardens; Nymphaeum; pools
Attitudes, Practices, Rituals and Funerary Arts Across Disciplines and Cultures
edited by Debra Andrist
submission deadline 30 Mar 2026 | Viewed by 187 | Submission Open
Keywords: death; mortality; funerary; ritual; burial; mourning; afterlife
Music, Gesture, and Embodiment: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Gesture–Sound Studies
edited by
submission deadline 31 Mar 2026 | Viewed by 310 | Submission Open
Keywords: embodied music cognition; music and gesture; gesture– sound relationship; gesture analysis; motion capture technologies; multimodality; interdisciplinary approaches; video-based gesture recognition; multimodal interaction; video-based gesture recognition
Rethinking Art History and Culture: Defining an Ecological Approach
edited by Claire Farago
submission deadline 31 Mar 2026 | Viewed by 271 | Submission Open
Keywords: study of planetary culture; intra-disciplinary collaboration; sociobiological synthesis (interrelationship of biological and social processes); nature/culture as a cultural construct; ecology; sustainability; connectivity; post-human/more than human; indigenous ontologies; ontoepistemology; performative; relationalities; (re)articulations; intra-activity
Swan Songs: Philosophical Reflections on Death, Time, and Memory in Testament Films
edited by Vasco Baptista Marques and Susana Viegas
submission deadline 1 Apr 2026 | 1 articles | Viewed by 1140 | Submission Open
Keywords: film philosophy; testament films; philosophy of death; mortality; memory
Art from the Medieval Mediterranean: A Critical View
edited by Justine M. Andrews
submission deadline 1 Apr 2026 | Viewed by 983 | Submission Open
Keywords: Mediterranean; art history; medieval; Byzantine; Islamic; Jewish
Animals and the Art Academy
edited by Rosemarie McGoldrick and
submission deadline 15 Apr 2026 | Viewed by 280 | Submission Open
Keywords: art; artist; animals; humans; ethics; academy; relational
Myths in Art, XV–XVII Centuries
edited by Robert Huber
submission deadline 30 Apr 2026 | Viewed by 716 | Submission Open
Keywords: alchemy; allegory; astrology; neo-Platonism; Hermeticism; Renaissance painting; prisca theologia; mythology; humanism; magic
Twenty-Five Years After Post-Black: Reframing Contemporary African American Art
edited by
submission deadline 1 May 2026 | Viewed by 179 | Submission Open
Keywords: African American Art; Contemporary Art; African Diaspora
Ecocritical Lens: Photography, Environment, and the Anthropocene
edited by Karla McManus
submission deadline 15 May 2026 | Viewed by 1382 | Submission Open
Keywords: eco-photography; art and the Anthropocene; ecocritical art history; material histories of photography; photography studies
Performative Imaging: Post-Digital Medialities in Contemporary Moving Image Practices
edited by Gabriel Menotti, and
submission deadline 31 May 2026 | Viewed by 1026 | Submission Open
Keywords: performance; installation; moving image; embodiment; participation; environmental; spatiality; post-digital; archives
Ethnographic Film Cinematography: Capturing Culture and Human Experience Through the Lens
edited by
submission deadline 20 Jun 2026 | Viewed by 142 | Submission Open
Keywords: ethnography; ethnographic film; anthropology; visual anthropology; ethnographic video; cinematography
Human-Animal Interactions in Western Art
edited by
submission deadline 30 Jun 2026 | 1 articles | Viewed by 3840 | Submission Open
Keywords: human– animal interactions; art history; animal studies; Western art
The Art of the Brain: Unlocking the Power of Neuroaesthetics in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
edited by
submission deadline 30 Jun 2026 | Viewed by 24 | Submission Open
Keywords: neuroaesthetics; Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs); creativity; cognitive function; emotional regulation; Artificial Intelligence (AI); Brain– Computer Interface (BCI)
The New Politics of Art: Artworks in an Age of Corporate Globalism
edited by Lenore Metrick-Chen
submission deadline 1 Jul 2026 | Viewed by 226 | Submission Open
Keywords: art; audience; alternative; politics; economics; activism; values; critical theory; equity; transformative; capitalism; resistance
Queerness in 18th- and 19th- Century European Art (2nd Edition)
edited by Andrew Shelton
submission deadline 1 Jul 2026 | Viewed by 158 | Submission Open
Keywords: queer; art history; 18th- and 19th- century
(This special issue belongs to the Section Visual Arts)
Ontological Investigations in Visual Art Studies
edited by Lampo Leong and
submission deadline 31 Jul 2026 | Viewed by 81 | Submission Open
Keywords: digital and AI art; immersive installations; contemporary ink; formal elements in visual art; technological innovation in art; ontological approaches in visual art studies; formalistic aesthetics; spiritual expression in art
Divine Visions: A Global Exploration of Devotional Art and Iconography, c. 1200–1700
edited by Katharine Scherff
submission deadline 1 Aug 2026 | Viewed by 147 | Submission Open
Keywords: devotion; iconography; materiality; embodiment; transcultural; performance; multisensory; ritual; representation; sacred
Intersecting Dialogues: Contemporary Art and Architecture in the 21st Century
edited by Pablo Meninato and Gregory Marinic
submission deadline 1 Oct 2026 | Viewed by 338 | Submission Open
Keywords: contemporary art; architecture; interdisciplinarity; art theory; architecture theory
[Re]thinking and Georeferencing Aesthetic: Heritage, Identity and Time
edited by Maria De Fátima Lambert, and
submission deadline 30 Oct 2026 | Viewed by 136 | Submission Open
Keywords: aesthetic as heritage— between me and you and the other; decolonial aesthetic thought: increasing and repairing; georeferenced aesthetic systems— analysing; reviewing beliefs; reviewing feminist aesthetic thought; revisiting aesthetic and cultural heritage; revising principles; canons and stereotypes; restoring women philosophers for aesthetic historiography; temporality of aesthetic systems— categories and insurrections
Photography, Civil Society and the Crisis of Democracy
edited by Terri Weissman
submission deadline 15 Nov 2026 | Viewed by 210 | Submission Open
Keywords: photography & democratic crisis; photography & justice; surveillance & sousveillance; photography & evidence; post-truth media; photography & collective action
Latin American Photography
edited by Nathanial Eli Gardner and Carmen Fernandez Galán Montemayor
submission deadline 31 Dec 2026 | Viewed by 35 | Submission Open
Keywords: Latin American photography; visual theory; visual literacy; semiotics and photography; text and image
(This special issue belongs to the Section Visual Arts)
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