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.