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The Art Major with an emphasis in Visual
Culture was developed by Webster University’s
Vienna campus in response to a world in which
the image increasingly rivals the written word
and in which images are most instrumental in
shaping our collective and individual
conceptions of reality. Visual Culture is an
area of academic investigation that not only
concentrates upon the past and its visual output
in the field of high art but also takes an
academic interest in all the visual phenomena
occurring today, and in the social and political
use of images and the cultural practices that
emerge from the use of these images. The Visual
Culture approach assumes that art interpretation
is not viewed as mere perception, but as a
production of meaning depending upon the
viewpoint of the beholder in terms of class,
gender, and cultural background.
There is a need to train individuals who can
analyze and interpret visual material in a
knowledgeable way and make critical use of
images. Graduates of the program are aware of
pictorial and iconographic codes of the past and
the corresponding artistic references. They
reflect upon the cultural and economics
circumstances of their art production and
interpretation, and they are able to transmit
this understanding to others through personal
artistic expression, through formal art
criticism, or through employment with public or
commercial art institutions.
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ART MAJOR
Art 