Museums and Visual Culture

Catalog description

Museums & Visual Culture introduces students to the multiple roles of visuality within the context of museums. Drawing from scholarly traditions in anthropology, art history, design, linguistics, media studies, museology, rhetoric, and semiotics, the course investigates: the philosophy of visuality; the complex relationships between cultural context, objects and viewers; the interplay of images, interpretation, and meaning; the relationship between power and the politics of what can or cannot be seen; the nature of designed spaces; and the growing influence of representation and identity in the visual experience of museums.