Another blessing from Sister Wendy

[Photo: WGBH/Spire Film] Sister Wendy’s new series on art in American museums takes the nun to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where she looks at works by Paul Gauguin, among them his masterpiece Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

By MARY ANN MARGER

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 2, 2001

For art lovers who find the nun's approach to art habit-forming, PBS has good news: A new series in which she plays docent for holdings at six American museums.

The sad little man sits Buddhalike on a green platform, at one end of a vast and lonely landscape. He is the Exiled Emperor on Oinoshima, the subject of a Japanese six-fold screen at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, and Sister Wendy can relate to him in a personal way. But the self-taught art historian, who has achieved international renown for her refreshing insights about great works of art, finds a life in solitude is nothing to regret; rather, it is a chosen privilege.

Sister Wendy's American Collection appears Wednesday at 8 p.m. on WEDU in the first of three two-hour segments, visiting six American museums, taking us on an hour's tour of each one. The nun, a consecrated virgin who normally spends her days in contemplation and prayer, lives alone in a trailer under the protection of a Carmelite cloister in England. She speaks only to the prioress and to the person who brings her daily provisions. It is hard to believe that someone so removed from the mainstream can have such worldly views.

But she does. In this series, her second to be brought to American audiences, she again delivers her fresh and unconventional interpretations of the world's art.

This is Sister Wendy's show, not Gauguin's or Vermeer's or any of the dozens of artists she presents. Every one of the 11 publicity photos sent by WGBH in Boston features the charming sister in a museum setting.

But, as she herself says, she's just the hook. She hopes that once people are drawn into the art, they will forget the person who is presenting it.

Try your best. When you clear that hurdle, you can relax into an hour at a leading museum. And you couldn't ask for a better guide.

She tours New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Kimbell, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. You might assume that anything after the Met would be anti-climactic. But each museum has an especially comprehensive collection that lends itself to Sister Wendy's purposes. And each is condensed to one hour, so only a few works can be shown.

America is rich in museums, says Sister Wendy, "appropriate because museums are a means to freedom. Here we can move out of our own personal anxieties and disappointments into the vast and stable world of human creativity."

She is comfortable and authoritative in presenting not only art that is Christian in origin, but also that of many peoples of the world, past and present. She moves easily from St. George's dragon, "evil personified," to a Chinese dragon, a symbol of good fortune. Both examples are at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

She tells us less about the process of making art and more about the concepts that motivated the result. Many people, viewing John Singleton Copley's painting of Paul Revere at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, never get past the fact that he was immortalized as a patriot by Longfellow. Yet here he is depicted as a silversmith. Sister Wendy explains without the bias of a British subject that Copley had loyalist leanings, which may have kept him from portraying Revere as a heroic figure. Instead he revealed his other very legitimate claim to fame.

She then moves on to Revere's Sons of Liberty Bowl and from there to a native American vessel. In this way she continues through the museum, offering insights on fine works that most visitors pass by, as well as on the masterpieces of John Singer Sargent and Paul Gauguin.

Other great works include Georges Seurat's Sunday on La Grande Jatte and Grant Wood's American Gothic, "the most celebrated American painting of all," both at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Sometimes her work has special relevance to us in the Tampa Bay area. When she talks about Georgia O'Keeffe's flowers in Boston, her comments relate just as well to O'Keeffe's magnificent poppy at another Museum of Fine Arts, in St. Petersburg. In Chicago she discovers George Inness' Early Morning at Tarpon Springs. "I'm not going to argue that George Inness is the greatest painter of his era," she says, "but he's the one who moves me most."

Because the six hours are presented in two-hour segments, the series begs to be taped (or you may purchase the videos as well as an accompanying text; see www.pbs.org). They provide good material for boning up if you're visiting one of the six cities.

In a pattern too typical of the local affiliate, WEDU is deviating from the national feed of the segments (which were to have aired once a week for three weeks), to fit them into a fundraising drive. On WEDU, the second installment airs 8-10 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 18, and the third 8-10 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 19. Repeats are scheduled for 1-3 p.m. Sept. 18, 19 and 20.

TV preview

Sister Wendy's American Collection begins Wednesday, 8-10 p.m., on WEDU-Ch. 3 and continues 8-10 p.m. on Sept. 18 and 19.

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