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Minnesota Center for Visual Literacy

The images are already shaping you

The Minnesota Center for Visual Literacy teaches communities to see, question, and reclaim their own story.

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Who We Are

We teach people how to see.

The Minnesota Center for Visual Literacy is a nonprofit organization dedicated to public education about how images shape culture, memory, and collective perception.

We believe visual literacy is not a luxury — it’s a civic skill. In a world flooded with images, the ability to read them critically is as essential as the ability to read words.

Our work is grounded in one conviction: give truth a place to be seen.

Our Commitment to Community

Visual literacy belongs to everyone — not just artists, academics, or people who already speak the language. Everything we build is designed to be accessible, welcoming, and rooted in the communities we serve.

Empowering Through Education

When people understand how images work — who makes them, why, and what they're really saying — they stop being passive consumers and start being critical thinkers. That shift is what we're here for.

Five ways we do the work​

Reading Images

Discover how we interpret visual messages and understand their context in everyday life.

Images and Power

Learn about the influence of imagery on societal perspectives and authority dynamics.

Responsible Creation

Understand the ethical considerations in creating and sharing visual content.

The Right to Be Seen

Who gets seen in images, how they're seen, and what happens when whole communities are left out of the frame.

Rooted in Truth​

How images shape collective memory, historical record, and public understanding — and how we protect that truth

Discover Visual Impact

Upcoming Events

Reading Images in the Age of AI

An intimate invite-only conversation about how artificial intelligence is changing what we see, what we believe, and what we remember.

Details coming soon.

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Why this center exists.

Giliane E. Mansfeldt has been making photographs for 25 years — but she's been learning to see for much longer than that. In sixth grade, she picked up a camera for the first time and photographed her desk lamp. A close-up, black and white, the way she saw it. Something shifted. For the first time, she had a tool that matched the way her mind worked — one that let her say: this is what I see. This is real. She went on to earn a BA in Cultural Anthropology, a professional photography certification, and more than two decades of experience as a portrait photographer, photo researcher, and photography educator. But the question that has followed her through all of it is the same one that led her to that desk lamp: What does it mean to truly be seen? The Minnesota Center for Visual Literacy is her answer to that question — not just for herself, but for every person who has ever been misrepresented, overlooked, or erased by an image. And for every person who has never been taught that they have the right to look critically at the images that shape their world.
Read Her Full Story →