Dikovitskaya, M: From Art History to Visual Culture

Visual Culture is a research area and a curricular initiative that regards the visual image as the focal point in the processes through which meaning is made in a cultural context. This work explores the history, theoretical frameworks, methodology and pedagogy of Visual Culture in the United States around 2000. The main questions are: What are the relationships between the study of Art History and the study of the visual and the cultural? How does one teach Visual Culture? Visual Culture does not replace Art History. The former expands the study of images and adds a new dimension to the traditional history of art by looking at images that have not been considered art. Visual Culture is not limited to the study of representations but extends to the everyday practices of seeing and showing. There are two aspects, disciplinary and institutional, and two "dimensions" to this work: temporal - concerning the art-historical enterprise as it had been shaped by currents of thought before the advent of Critical Theory, contrasted with the present state of scholarship, and spatial - similarities and differences in the curricula and methods of teaching in four US universities are examined.