Jeffrey Abt, associate professor of art and art history, will present a lecture about his art exhibition at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 16, in the Community Arts Gallery at Wayne State University. The free lecture is open to the public.

His exhibition Museums of Absence: Jeffery Abt, Images and Texts1989-1999 continues through Saturday, Dec. 4, in the Community Arts Gallery.

The exhibition has paintings, drawing and mixed media images as well as publications; it surveys his work in both art and scholarship.

Abt's work frequently touches the area of archaeology and depicts scenes of the Near East, broken objects and devices for observing and measuring.

These scenes often are visual surrogates for society's efforts to deal with losses and absences that ultimately find expression in organized institutions like museums or disciplines like archaeology.

Examining archaeology as a metaphor, his work considers how civilization recovers or sometimes fabricates cultural memories through its collections of images and objects.

Gallery hours are 10 a.m.- 6 p.m. Tuesday - Friday. Both the Community Arts Gallery and the Elaine L. Jacob Gallery will remain open until 9 p.m. for Detroit's annual Gallery Crawl on Friday, Dec. 3, and Noel Night, Saturday, Dec. 4.

For more information call Sandra Dupret, gallery curator, at (313) 577-2423.