Having recently encountered the scorched and blackened ‘Assemblages’ of the American artist John Latham there, I nowadays approach the Bear Lane Gallery, in Oxford, with a certain caution. One can never be quite sure what is going to happen next. This month‘s exhibition, Modern Art and the Church, sounded like another challenge. On the earlier occasion, a few people were, I believe, rather indignant when they discovered what Mr Latham had been up to, with all that old gas-piping and burned secondhand books. But no one had to be carried out kicking and screaming as once they might have been. By now most of us have made our peace with Modern Art and the Modern Artist. But when one puts Modern Art and the Church together in the same room, one becomes aware how uneasy their alliance has always appeared. The problem is to see why this should be so. It is not that there is anything in the present exhibition which would upset one. One almost wishes there were. But problem there is, and it is made all the more difficult by the fact that nearly all the exhibits are meant to be seen in quite another context, as parts of a larger complex of architecture, or as things used and worn. It is not, however, just that stained glass is best judged when seen in the situation for which it was designed rather than when displayed under artificial light, even when this is done as effectively as it is in the depths of the Bear Lane. Most people are capable of makmg the required imaginative adjustment and allowing for the necessary restrictions imposed by a gallery. No. The sense of confusion has, I always feel where this matter is concerned, a deeper source and one more difficult to get at. It may perhaps be worthwhile attempting to say something about it, if this review is to be more than a mere elaboration of the catalogue, a list of ‘what I liked and what I didn't like’.