Theology, Modernity, and the Visual Arts

The Theology, Modernity, and the Visual Arts project was launched in 2018 as the second phase of the wider Theology, Modernity, and the Arts research initiative. Directed by Dr. Ben Quash, Professor of Christianity and the Arts and Director of the Centre for the Arts & the Sacred at King’s College London (ASK), and Dr. Chloë Reddaway, McDonald Agape Research Fellow in Theology and the Visual Arts and Deputy Director of ASK, the project’s core research was mounted over the course of five years with four international symposia in key European cities. 

From 2018–2023, a core group of biblical scholars, theologians, art historians, and curators convened annually for an international symposium to explore the project’s key thematic questions: What questions about Christ and modernity do the visual arts pose? And what truths about Christ and modernity do they ask us to face? 

The four symposia each focused on a particular preposition: art with Christianity opened the project in the Royal Academy of Arts, London; art instead of Christianity was taken up in 2019 at the School of Art Institute of Chicago; art about Christianity was pursued via Zoom during the pandemic in 2020–2021; and in 2022 at the Bode Museum and the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, the project scholars discussed the various ways art has been for Christianity. As with all TMA project wings, practicing artists played a key role in the project, with each symposium featuring public panels with visual artists, curators, and critics.

The project culminated in 2024, with a fifth and final celebratory symposium featuring the inaugural McDonald Agape Lecture in Theology and the Visual Arts and a book launch for Theology, Modernity, and the Visual Arts (Brepols 2024).