Broken Family Reunited on Museum Walls

When I read the recent obituary (December 30, 2018) for Sister Wendy Beckett in the LA Times, I smiled. She died in England, at a Carmelite Monastery at age 88. You may ask, “Edward, why did you smile?” Because, that’s how millions of viewers of the famous BBC series Sister Wendy’s Odyssey remember her – she was always smiling, while talking about great works of art in museums all around the world.

Still from “Rothko and Warhol” (https://youtu.be/v3sPATJc7rM). Courtesy debbidbu

Marilyn Diptych, or Boticelli’s Birth of Venus, she would invite the camera and viewers to come closer, to look at the details, to see the brushwork, to “touch” the surface with our eyes.

Still from “SISTER WENDY Botticelli Birth of a Venus” (https://youtu.be/XYTT3U9Fhiw). Courtesy FHSSievert

Frans Hals. “The Van Campen Family in a Landscape”. ~1603-1666. The left half is in the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art, with an extra baby lower left added by Salomon de Bray in 1628. The Center is in the collection of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. A third fragment on the far right from a European private collection make up the three known surviving pieces of the original portrait. Pictured as displayed in the Toledo Museum of Art during the exhibition "Frans Hals Portraits: A Family Reunion". Image courtesy Wikipedia.

managed to get most of these canvases in one room for the exhibition, "Frans Hals Portraits: A Family Reunion." It’s painful to think that now that the exhibition is over, this great painting and family will be broken apart once again.

Vitorre Carpaccio. “Hunting on the Lagoon”. ~1490-1495. Image courtesy Wikipedia.

Vitorre Carpaccio. “Two Venetian Ladies”. ~1490-1510. Image courtesy Wikipedia.

Vitorre Carpaccio. Two Venetian Ladies and Hunting in the Lagoon, reconstitution. Image courtesy Wikipedia.