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David and Art
Monday 4:44am, 6:44am, 8:44am and 5:44pm

Art reveals the world to us in new ways.  On KWBU, we have a new weekly feature focusing on art.

The module is hosted by David Smith, an American historian with broad interests in his field.  He’s been at Baylor University since 2002 teaching classes in American history, military history, and cultural history.  For eight years he wrote an arts and culture column for the Waco Tribune-Herald, and his writings on history, art, and culture have appeared in other newspapers from the Wall Street Journal to the Dallas Morning News.

The very first record he remembers listening to when he was little was Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic’s recording of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and that set him on a lifelong path of loving music and the arts.  He’s loved history for almost as long, and finally saw them come together in his career.  He believes that history illuminates the arts and the arts illuminate history—that they co-exist and are best understood together.

Follow David on Twitter @DavidASmith12

Latest Episodes
  • This is 103.3 Waco Public Radio. In the week's episode of David and Art, host David Smith explores how war, poetry, and painting have intersected in the lives of American soldiers—from World War II heroes to today’s veterans.
  • Host David Smith delves into how war, memory, and art can come together in unexpected ways.
  • This week on David and Art...a surprising discovery leads to a reflection on how the door to great art never really closes, no matter when you walk through it.
  • What happens when art asks more of us than we’re used to giving? And who’s still paying attention when it does?
  • This week on David and Art, we head to Glasgow to meet a group of women artists who built their own community and challenged the status quo. Here's David Smith.
  • In this episode of David and Art, David Smith reflects on how history, policy, and personal perspective intersect in the story of a cultural institution.
  • Sometimes when art looks at art, it can show how many works can deepen our view of suffering—and the quiet indifference that often surrounds it.
  • Host David Smith introduces us to an under-the-radar group of 19th-century painters who challenged the artistic norms of their time and pushed back against the gatekeepers of the art world.
  • This week on David and Art, host David Smith Smith looks at how celebrity can cloud our view of real achievement—especially when the artist becomes more famous than the art.
  • From a creative youth and the influence of dreams to showmanship and celebrity, on this weeks David and Art, host David Smith digs into the fascinating trajectory of an iconic Spanish painter.