Welcome to the International Association for Visual Culture, an international network of scholars, educators, artists, curators, and museum professionals dedicated to the advancement of Visual Culture Studies in a transnational and contemporary framework.

The IAVC serves as an advocacy group and professional organization that unites a diversity of opinions, platforms, and ideas. Established in 2009, the IAVC has held four major biennial conferences since 2010; these meetings serve as the organizational core.

In times that threaten solidarity through polarized definitions of nation and identity, the IAVC offers sites and resources for exchange, learning and growth.

MISSION

The International Association for Visual Culture fosters communication and exchange among individuals and institutions engaged in critical analyses of and interventions in visual culture. It supports trans-national and trans-disciplinary engagements across a wide range of communities, organizations, and platforms. The IAVC encourages and advocates inquiry and debate within the field and advocates for the critical and theoretical expansion of Visual Culture Studies in sites including the museum, the university, the artist’s studio, and emergent alternatives.

The IAVC’s biennial conferences serve to realize this mission. These meetings, which have been held since 2010, are designed to be points of gathering organized around politically expedient themes related to the contemporary moment and the host city. Each conference features a range of thinker-makers that speak, participate, and organize in thoughtful and rigorous discussions that ideally lead to a range of collaborative outcomes.

VISION

Knowledge Project to advance research and analysis of visual culture; and by extension Visual Culture Studies as a field of inquiry;

Contemporary Witnessing to engage and respond with and to practices of transformation in visual culture, in academia, the culture sector, the studio, and the street;

Communities Project to foster communities and link constituencies internationally through dynamic and exciting biennial conferences;

Lobby Project to advance the discipline within academia, the culture sector, and funding bodies and therefore to legitimize the study of Visual Culture Studies as a strong and necessary participant in the contemporary world.