Can you put a painting on the “Runway”? Will Bravo do for fine art what the network did for fashion? “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” (10 p.m., Bravo) makes a noble if not always entertaining effort. Following the “Runway” template, “Art” gathers 14 would-be-famous artists and runs them through a series of eliminations and competitions with three judges (whom most of us have never heard of) critiquing their works. The adequate efforts receive an undramatic pass, while the best and the worst three creations fall under scrutiny in a nail-biting finale.

As on “Runway,” the show’s drama depends on the eccentricities and outsized egos of the contestants. And, as we’ve come to expect, some possess remarkable talent while others suffer from personality problems or serious delusions.

It should be interesting to see if “Art” finds an audience. The stakes are certainly high for the contestants. The winner will receive $100,000 and a one-person show at the Brooklyn Museum. I’m just not certain that the stakes or the fine art will matter that much to the audience. “Art” will air at 9 p.m., beginning next week.

• Hosted by Morgan Freeman, the new science-magazine series “Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman” (9 p.m., Science) will examine cutting-edge research, emerging technology and mind-bending new theories on a weekly basis. “Wormhole” kicks off with one of the really big questions: How do we reconcile science and religion? Does science refute the existence of the divine? Or explain it?

Freeman doesn’t so much host the show as offer brief introductory remarks and interstitial commentary. Tonight’s “Wormhole” looks at an eccentric physicist and surfer who may be approaching a mathematical proof of a unified theory of existence that eluded even Einstein. (This sailed right over my head.) A neuroscientist believes he has found the part of the brain where transcendent religious experiences occur. He’s even retrofitted a football helmet with wires and magnets to experiment with subjects who have a rapturous religious moment every time they don the “God helmet.” Another scientist theorizes that advancing computer technology suggests that we may simply be the creation of a universal computer code — and that the entire universe may be one big game of “The Sims.”

You probably won’t find (or lose) your religion while slipping through “The Wormhole,” but you can’t help but think.

• Reality television has become home to the spoiled, uneducated, incurious, entitled and seemingly unemployable. Tonight, one show turns the tables with “You’re Cut Off” (8 p.m., VH1), a contrived morality tale that promises to slap out-of-control party animals with a financial restraining order and “rehabilitate” them.

Tonight’s other highlights

• The competition continues on “So You Think You Can Dance” (7 p.m., Fox).

• Kid Rock hosts the 2010 CMT Music Awards (7 p.m., CMT), featuring appearances by Toby Keith, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley and the Zac Brown Band.

• Phil and Jay fill a coaching vacuum on “Modern Family” (8 p.m., ABC).

• The discovery of a severed hand deepens the mystery on “Happy Town” (9 p.m., ABC).

Cult choice

Aaron Eckhart portrays a lobbyist who is alive with pleasure in the 2005 adaptation of Chris Buckley’s Washington satire “Thank You for Smoking” (9 p.m., IFC).