Press Releases

NEXT AIA LECTURE IS APRIL 7

The Lincoln-Omaha Society of the Archaeological Institute of America announces its fifth lecture of the 2007 - 08 season.  Dr. John Pollini, from the University of Southern California, one of the foremost experts in the world on Roman sculpture, will deliver a lecture on an aspect of art vandalism rarely treated in modern religious accounts: willful destruction and vandalism of traditional Greco-Roman religious buildings and monuments by early Christian zealots.

In popular culture Christianity is remembered for the art, architecture, customs, rituals, and myths that it preserved from the Classical past.  It is rarely acknowledged, however, that Christianity also destroyed a great deal in its conversion of the Roman Empire.  In fact, of the three major monotheistic religions, Christianity proved to be the most destructive to the polytheistic religions and material culture of the Old as well as the New World.  Professor Pollini's talk represents a work-in-progress based on a book that he is currently writing on Christian destruction and desecration of Images of Classical Antiquity.  In his talk, he presents evidence of different forms of Christian destruction and desecration, as well as some the attendant problems in detecting and making sense of this phenomenon.

John Pollini is Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology in the Department of Art History at the University of Southern California, where he has taught since 1987.  He has also served as Chair of the Department and as Dean of the School of Fine Arts. 

Professor Pollini has received numerous fellowships and awards, including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, two American Council of Learned Societies Fellowships, two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, and a Fulbright Fellowship to Italy. He is an elected life-member of the German Archaeological Institute. 

Professor Pollini has lectured widely both in the United States and in Europe. In addition to numerous articles and reviews, he has authored four books and edited another, all dealing with various aspects of Greek and Roman art, considered in an interdisciplinary context.

The lecture is free and open to the public.