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
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This summer, the Pope sat down with 200 artists to find common ground in what they both do.
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Building cultural institutions is a public responsibility, not just a private one.
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The Dutch painter Vermeer is going into assisted living facilities to help people there feel less isolated.
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If you haven't considered dance to be a form of public art, take a ride on the subway.Taking tap dance into places where people least expect it is a good way of turning anywhere into an art space.
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Music written for a concert on a river hundreds of years ago became a classic that's still popular.On his way to becoming one of the best-loved composers in England, one German-born musician wrote tunes intended to be played on a boat.
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Funding more public school art teachers would let more students discover a new passion.
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Paul Revere and Sam Adams were in a revolutionary group called the “Sons of Liberty.” They had something in common artistically as well.
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Murals are commemorating, and teaching about, the newest federal holiday.
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For a short time, the mountains of North Carolina were once the center of the American avant-garde.