Commentary: Visual culture, visual brain and (art) education

An adaptation of a keynote address that was presented at the International Symposium on the New Prospects of Art Education, which was held at the National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, in September 2001. The writer explains how she has tried to rationalize the importance of visual culture in the educational enterprise on the grounds that the richness of the pictorial repertoires that it embraces provides opportunities for the development of visual intelligence. She believes that visual culture is essential to visual education, a cognitive endeavor that would facilitate a more complete and engaged participation in the visual world than that currently championed by art education. The writer discusses conceptions of development and visual culture and brain research and the possibility of visual education. Copyright © 2003 Swets Subscription Service.