Can contemporary art be seriously religious? This is the thought-provoking subject of a public lecture that will be delivered by American art historian Professor James Elkins at St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity in Valletta on Tuesday at 7 p.m.

The lecture will be concerned with the fact that serious talk about religion and spirituality is excluded from contemporary art, unless the art is in some way critical, ambivalent, or ironic, as in Andres Serrano's work. The famous counter-examples - the Rothko Chapel, Barnett Newman's religious work - only prove the case by their rarity.

Professor Elkins has been invited to Malta by the Faculty of Education (Art Programme) at the University of Malta and will read two papers during his stay here. His prolific writing focuses on the history and theory of images in art, science, and nature. Among his many books are Pictures and Tears, The Poetics of Perspective, On Pictures and the Words that Fail Them, Chinese Landscape Painting as Western Art History, and Art History versus Aesthetics. He is Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the famous School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Head of the History of Art at University College, Cork, Ireland.

During his stay, Professor Elkins will visit the Faculty of Education, where he will deliver a lecture to students and staff about the challenging subject "Why Art Cannot Be Taught". The title of the public lecture at St James Cavalier is also the title of a recent book by James Elkins published by Routledge, On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art (2004).

This lecture will be held in the Music Hall, and attendance is free of charge. For the occasion, the Faculty of Education is also organising a display of photographs that document recent work by Maltese contemporary artists who deal with religion in their art. This exhibition will be held in the adjacent Terrace Hall at St James Cavalier.