July 2011 / ART EDUCATION 33 Visual Culture and Literacy Image Galleries as Sites of Learning A s new media emerge in the common culture, we recommend that art educators adopt those media to facilitate deep understanding of visual culture and literacy. We report here on applications of an online image gallery that helps users develop ways to interpret what they see and compose. In the January 2010 issue of Art Education, Flávia Bastos (2010) argues in her editorial that, in the contemporary era, educators must face the demands, challenges, and rewards of new media art education. Bastos acknowledges such a debate in the ield of art educa- tion around the merits of infusing computer technology within art education practice. In response, she encourages the reader to imagine what new media art education might be and do. Described as BY B. STEPHEN CARPENTER II AND LAUREN CIFUENTES “creative artistic applications of new learning and teaching technologies” (Gouzouasis cited in Bastos, 2010, p. 4), new media art education in this sense is not new, but rather has gained increased attention and access in recent years as a result of developments in digital technology, video, photography, and Web-based applications (Buington, 2008; Carpenter & Taylor, 2003; Ettinger 1988; Gregory, 1996; Heise & Grandgenett, 1996; Keifer-Boyd, 1996; Mercedes, 1996; Milekic, 2000; Prater, 2001; Roland, 1990; Stokrocki, 2007; Sweeny, 2004, 2005; Taylor & Carpenter, 2002; Taylor & Carpenter, 2007). Humans live in complex and overlapping visual cultures. Our dominant pastimes involve visual media such as ilm, television, video games, and the Internet. Nicholas Mirzoef (1999) explains that “human experience is more visual and visualized than ever before” (p. 1), and that although visualization has become part of everyday life, “the visualization of everyday life does not mean that we necessarily know what it is we are seeing” (p. 2). Seeing is central to our understandings of international and cultural diferences and therefore, a great amount of work in visual culture studies is centered on the construction of identity through the interdepen- dent elements of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, class, and ability (Mirzoef, 2009). People around the world navigate daily a variety of visual information. Such navigation of visual culture is conducted through varying degrees of informed and sophisticated interpreta- tions. Increased sophistication in interpreting visual culture is part of visual literacy (Lohr, 2008). Exploring models of culture can facilitate sophisticated interpretations of what we see and of what we construct visually. Such models have been developed by Hall (1990), Hofstede (1997), and Storti (1997) and include cultural variables such as gender bias, concept of time, and attitudes toward authority. © 2011. Used with permission of National Art Education Association.