online shopping mall   online shopping mall ad
Welcome to Dynamic Plaza online shopping mall. We have prepared millions of merchandise. You may search products for online shopping. If you would like to see all the products for a certain specialty, you may browse the categories of this online store.

Sister Wendy's American Collection, Box Set
Sister Wendy's American Collection, Box Set
Click for a closer view


List Price: $79.95
Our Price: $39.95
You Save: $40.00 (50%)

Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days


Product Details

  • Starring: Sister Wendy
  • Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
  • Binding: VHS Tape
  • EAN: 9781578075782
  • Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
  • ISBN: 1578075785
  • Label: Wgbh Boston
  • Manufacturer: Wgbh Boston
  • Number of Items: 6
  • Product Group: Video
  • Publisher: Wgbh Boston
  • Release Date: 2001-09-25
  • Studio: Wgbh Boston
  • Theatrical Release Date: 2001
  • Title: Sister Wendy's American Collection, Box Set
  • UPC: 783421325531
Avg Customer Rating: 4 stars

Product Description: Sister Wendy Beckett, a cloistered nun and Oxford-educated art scholar who became a most unlikely TV personality in Britain, takes an art appreciation tour across America, visiting six major art museums in this series from PBS. Strolling through the galleries in her flowing black habit, Sister Wendy looks like someone from another age, but her opinions are often quite modern. In the Metropolitan Museum in New York she speaks eloquently about native sculpture in the oceanic gallery as well as about works by great masters, and in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts she spends a few minutes discoursing about pop art and specifically Roy Lichtenstein's "Glass V." At the Art Institute of Chicago she delivers a succinct lecture on Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks," noting how it was painted soon after Pearl Harbor and depicts a New York City rife with anxiety. She also visits the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Fort Worth's Kimbell Art Museum. Sister Wendy's insights are entertaining, and she has a unique gift for communicating the joy one gets from appreciation of great art. --Robert J. McNamara


Customer Reviews


3 stars Ok but political correctness makes it worse than it should have been.
Sister Wendy's American collection box set is an interesting survey of art collected in six American museums.About two thirds of the works surveyed merit the time dedicated to them.Her comments on art and specific works in general are MOSTLY informative and insightful but the format is marred by her use of "WE" and US" in describing HER feelings on specific works. Also, can we ever find a documentary that is not catered to hide a politically correct message behind it? I want to learn and understand art history not be given a feminist lecture.


5 stars Halleluyah!
If you can get past the habit and listen, you have a really interesting and respectful open-minded art critic who is a nun, but we all look past that part! Wendy Beckett is an art scholar and I trust her implicitly. Her views are not only psychologically and philosophically enchanting but mesmerizing as well as intriguing. Looking at her open-mindedness to art and her appreciation of fine art is absolutely delightful and entertaining!

As an art aficionado who has spent time in most of these museums, she really posits true and genuine opinions and interpretations based on her own thoughts, without imposing her own private religiousity on you!

Bravo, sister Wendy!

[...]! It is a great box set! And no, she is NOT boring as other reviewers who just don't appreciate fine art have reviewed her with one star!


5 stars Sister Wendy's American Collection
If you love Sister Wendy then there is no need for a review on this collection. She has a wonderful persona and opens up a knew understanding of art for those who know little about this world. Art becomes more than simply a famous piece of artwork or an ancient artifact etc.. because Sister Wendy gives you a different prespective from the inside out! Great work! About time you could get her on DVD!


5 stars Brillant!
Any half-decent or better University Art History class is sure to appreciate the perspectives Sister Wendy brings to these discs. Sister Wendy does a brillant job, as always, with the American Collection! You will be a better person for watching and understanding this collection.


5 stars Thank You, Sister Wendy!!
Sister Wendy Beckett has done for art appreciation and art history what the late Carl Sagan did for the science of astronomy: she has taken a subject that most people would like to know more about, but fear is beyond their ability to understand, and made it accessible and entertaining. She has wrested art from the hands of intellectuals and elitists and given it back to the people, to whom it has always rightfully belonged. Some people appear to resent this. The rest of us should stand up and cheer.

In this charming series, Sister Wendy visits six of the United States' most renowned art museums and shares with her viewers some of their masterpieces. Her opinions, sometimes whimsical, sometimes wistful and sometimes reverent, are delivered with great passion and enthusiasm. This open love of her subject matter is infectious and draws the viewer to her and to the art works she so clearly loves. This is what makes her so effective as a guide and teacher.

Sister Wendy also makes a wonderfully evocative use of language, at one point, during a discussion of Grant Wood's "American Gothic" she describes the woman's hair as having been "...scraped back in a bun." This captured the woman's hairstyle with such economy and vividness that I, in my mind's eye, could see her combing her hair into a repressed little bun. Except for that one tendril, which Sister Wendy also points out to her viewers.

Like all those who view a work of art, Sister Wendy brings her own, unique perspective to each work she has chosen to discuss. Nowhere is this more powerfully shown than in her discussion of the Kinbell's "An Exiled Emperor on Okinoshima." While most people would perceive the solitary figure on the Japanese screen as lonely and isolated, Sister Wendy, who spends most of her time alone in silent contemplation and prayer, at first sees a kindred spirit. This leads her to identify with the Emperor in ways most people would never dream of and she shares her unique perspective with us. And we are richer, not just for seeing the screen and hearing her interpretation, but also for having been given this tiny scrap of insight into a life most of us can't even imagine.

Through her books and television series, Sister Wendy has given us something she seems to greatly admire about the United States: Freedom. The freedom to look at a work of art and interpret and enjoy it through our own particular lens, our own perspective. By showing and telling us how she understands and appreciates art, Sister Wendy invites us to take the liberty to do likewise.

Thank you, Sister Wendy!