A recent art exhibit at the Russian National Museum in St. Petersburg is an example of interreligious dialogue, though not of the verbal kind. Held in June 1996, the exhibit, entitled "Dialogue," featured work by artist Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik, a Slovenian Jesuit, and Orthodox painter Aleksandr Ishchenko. It was the first time after communism that a Russian state institution hosted a display of Orthodox and Catholic spiritual art.

While the artwork shown at the exhibit in St. Petersburg produced dialogue among visitors, it was also the product of dialogue, one that had its origin hundreds of miles away, at the Centro Ezio Aletti in Rome.

Run by four Jesuits and four nuns, the center-part of the Jesuits' Pontifical Oriental Institute-hosts artists from around the world. Rupnik, the director, calls it "an atelier in the classical sense of the word, a place where all kinds of artists find themselves together working and creating in an atmosphere of continuous dialogue and comparison." It is a place where artists can spend time perfecting techniques (which include fresco, mosaic, sculpture, and painting) and reflecting on the spirituality behind their work.

The artists, who come from countries as diverse as Brazil, Russia, Italy, and Romania, represent the Orthodox, Eastern Catholic, and Latin Catholic churches. While living and working at the center, they are able to discuss spiritual and liturgical differences. At Centro Aletti, religious and artistic studies necessarily "breathe with two lungs, the oriental and the occidental." This atmosphere of openness to East-West interaction is the crucible out of which the Catholic-Orthodox "Dialogue" exhibit was born.

A St. Petersburg exhibit of the work of Fr. Marko Rupnik, SJ, and Aleksandr Ishchenko was ecumenical dialogue on an artistic level.

In May 1997, the exhibit moved from Russia to the Czech Republic. Similar Centro Aletti exhibits have also been featured at the National Art Museum in Cluj, Romania, and at the S. Giusto Castle Museum in Trieste, Italy. Rupnik and his colleagues are currently in the process of planning another "dialogue" exhibition at the National Museum in Bratislava, Slovakia.