Sister Wendy Beckett, nun, art historian and critic, and BBC television personality.
By 1997, as she marked 50 years as a nun, the Oxford-educated Sister Wendy had made three television series, the most successful BBC arts programs since “Civilisation,” the art historian Kenneth Clark’s landmark 1969 documentaries. She had also written 15 books on art and religion, and was a celebrity on both sides of the Atlantic, featured in articles and mobbed by fans.
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For all her success, she remained a nun with commitments to prayer, solitude (when possible) and vows of poverty. She assigned all her earnings to a Carmelite order that had sheltered her for decades, and she attended Mass daily, even when traveling.
Technically, not an obit, but: the NYT summary of obits for 2018. (Even though we have close to a week left in the year.)
Spoiler: the five most read obits this year, according to the paper of record, were those for: Kate Spade, Anthony Bourdain, Tyrone Gayle (“a 30-year-old press secretary to Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California, and a former spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign”), John McCain, and…Zombie Boy.
I remember one of her shows. She looked unusual, but she seemed to know her stuff.
I had heard of Sister Wendy (I think maybe she was profiled on “60 Minutes”?) but I’ve never managed to catch any of her series.
Interestingly, it looks like there’s a “Complete Collection” on DVD, but that’s currently out of stock at Amazon.