An Exhibition About an Art Critic?

Nobody goes to a baseball game to watch the umpires, so why would someone go to a museum to see an exhibition dedicated to an art critic—one of those arbiters of taste who hopes to mediate but sometimes only muddles the interaction between artists and the public? England’s Tate Britain bets that the British public will come to watch the umpire in their new exhibition Kenneth Clark: Looking for Civilisation. Not just your average umpire, Sir Kenneth Clark (shown above) ruled over art criticism for decades, stretching from his becoming Director of the British National Gallery in 1933 at just 30 years of age all the way to his crowning achievement with the 13-part documentary Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark in 1969. Although the main focus of the show is on Clark’s work in the 1930s and 1940s, by having the show’s title hark back to his highly personal broadcast of what was civilization and art, it raises the larger question of how this public servant served the public for well-intentioned good and possibly ill, as any critic can. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "An Exhibition About an Art Critic?"

Wither Sister Wendy

While some friends were asking about my blog at lunch last week, they came up with a great question. So, here I’ll create a virtual milk carton and slap a familiar face on it to ask the question: Whatever happened to Sister Wendy? (The face that launched a thousand PBS fund drives is above.)

Sister Wendy Beckett, according to Wikipedia, is still alive at 77, living a life of prayer and contemplation in a Carmelite nunnery in Quidenham, Norfolk, England. She recently came out of contemplation long enough to give her, uh, blessing to a musical about her life, Postcards From God: The Sister Wendy Musical, which ran in London early in 2007. The tag line to the musical, “Nun Critic Superstar,” says it all.

The good Sister, who can brag of a degree in English Literature from Oxford University, began as a serious art critic, publishing articles in academic art journals before launching her illustrious television career. The books and videos spun off from those series will guarantee her fame long after she’s, shall we say, kicked the habit.

As an Irish Catholic with still-fresh memories of the nuns from my grade school days, I always found it disconcerting to see Sister Wendy floating before old master nudes, her hands flitting about in the air to shape the curves of the flesh in front of her as she described the sensuous features in her lilting British accent. Nathan Lane’s spot-on impression of her on Saturday Night Live captured this otherworldly, yet oddly eroticized aspect of Sister Wendy, who had actually taken the step of becoming a consecrated virgin.

Sister Wendy’s ability to bring great art to a popular audience, however, something not achieved on an equal scale since Sir Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation series in 1969, guarantees her a place in the minds and hearts of art lovers everywhere forever.