Following border closures, public health interventions, and a shift to digital solutions to combat the spread of COVID-19, there is a desire to interact, move, and touch as a means to re-explore and reorient ourselves with the places, people, and objects with which we may have lost direct access. As artists and art historians, much of our work relies on the ability to make contact with museums and exhibitions, architectural and archaeological sites, archives and libraries, artists, scholars, and objects. As we emerge from a period of reduced and restricted engagement with the methods and objects of our study, the impact of contact on the production, circulation, and reception of art and artifacts is perhaps more present than ever. Not only are there recent resonances to this topic, but there is also a much longer history that can be explored in regard to “contact”—one that is messy, contested, and complex. This symposium examines the implications of contact, broadly conceived, allowing for the exploration of haptic, temporal, spatial, and conceptual forms of connection and exchange.