Sister Wendy Beckett, TV art historian, dies at 88
Sister Wendy Beckett, a Roman Catholic nun who interrupted a cloistered life of prayer in England in 1991 and soared to international stardom with lyrical BBC documentaries that made her one of the most improbable art critics in television history, died on Wednesday in the village of East Harling, England.
Known for her disarming demeanor and endearing appearance, including buck teeth and a slight speech impediment that rendered R's as W's, Beckett provided insightful ameteur analyses of artwork ranging from Renaissance oil paintings to Warhol's Pop Art and, most controversially, Andres Serrano's Piss Christ (she believed that the work was not blasphemous).
Beckett shunned fame and rebuffed claims of celebrity; she frequently expressed hope that BBC executives would grow tired of her (she considered herself, in many interviews, to be a 'flavour of the month') and hire a new host so that she could return to her unheated caravan in which she lived, in devoted silence, on the grounds of a Carmelite monastery in Northern England. Beckett, 88, is survived by one brother.
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