Painter Reem Bassous, photographer Kapulani Landgraf and University of Hawaii English professor Cynthia Franklin will be featured speakers Tuesday in an arts roundtable, the first in a new, free series of conversations among visual artists, scholars and members of the public.

Presented by the Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawai‘i Council for the Humanities and Hawaii Public Radio, the panel in HPR’s Atherton Performing Arts Studio will explore the theme of “injustice against the land and what people perceive to be sacred or living places,” said Healoha Johnston, the museum’s Arts of Hawai‘i curator, who will serve as a moderator along with HPR culture reporter Noe Tanigawa.

The three speakers have examined how the landscape has been affected by development and war in areas from Hawaii to the Middle East. “They have three very different experiences with violence and injustice,” Johnston said.

“Beyond the Archive,” Bassous’ current show of her paintings at the Honolulu Museum of Art, uses multimedia layers to trace the effects of the Lebanese civil war and the ongoing conflict in that country, while Franklin has specialized in the Palestinian conflict as well as in women’s and ethnic literature.

In a new book of large-format photographs, “E Luku Wale E: Devastation Upon Devastation,” Landgraf and Mark Hamasaki show the destruction of natural and sacred sites they recorded as the H-3 freeway was being built. Landgraf, whose other work includes “Ponoiwi,” an installation at the Honolulu Museum of Art that included her photographs of desecration at Maui burial grounds, said she also looks forward to discussing ongoing harm to Hawaii lands.

For instance, Landgraf said, “Ulu Ma Wao, between Kaneohe and Kailua, is being quarried now; the whole mountain behind the peak is chopped down.”

While the artists will show examples of their work, a goal of the roundtable is to engage audience members in what are envisioned as “interdisciplinary conversations, not artists’ lectures,” Johnston said. “My hope is that people will come to the table with questions that will prompt us to think about geographical areas and also different experiences and how we extrapolate emotions about the violence that’s been done to people and the land.”

The roundtable will be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday with light refreshments to follow, in the Atherton studio at 738 Kaheka St. Although the event is free, seats are limited and reservations are recommended; call 955-8821.