Art nouveau: one gay writer managed to score a gig traveling the globe to bring the best of the art world to your living room--with both style and a little humor.

David Keeps has your dream job. The out journalist ("way out," he says) and former executive editor of Details magazine is now charismatic host of Art & the City, a new travel-arts program on Ovation TV (premiering October 7, then airing Wednesdays at 8 P.M. Eastern/Pacific). It's a position that requires him to eat fine food, lodge at five-star hotels, and then make sly, smart commentary about great artistic masterpieces. Not a bad gig if you can get it.

"It's not bad at all," Keeps admits. "I only wish we could spend two weeks doing each city instead of two days."

So far the show has captured the cultural highlights of Chicago, New Orleans, Paris, Los Angeles, New York, and London. Unlike many of its kind, Art & the City is aimed at a broad audience: viewers more interested in information than pretense.

"There is a lot of elitism in the art world," notes Keeps, "and I can throw around 10 dollar words with the best of them. But I'm more interested in finding out what is truly interesting in each city."

In the Chicago episode, for example, Keeps can be found eating oatmeal in bed at his remodeled early--20th century boutique hotel or riding his foot scooter through the public art displays of Millennium Park.

"I'm not Sister Wendy; I'm not PBS," he says. "I like to think I have a sort of [Californian travel host] Huell Howser--Jack Benny kind of thing happening. The audience isn't interested in art-talk bullshit. Instead, we're looking at the cities we visit through the eyes of the cultural institutions and the galleries and the artists who live there and, to some extent, the places to stay and eat."

Keeps leads these TV tours with a self-deferential, slightly bemused charm--Oscar Wilde without the snobbery. And it seems a strangely perfect fit. As a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times Home section who also has freelanced for Travel + Leisure and Interview (not to mention The Advocate), Keeps says the transition from writer's seclusion to the wild and woolly world of playing "talking head" has been only somewhat uneasy.

'Im comfortable interviewing people, but a little less comfortable talking directly to the camera as if it were my friend," says Keeps. "It's not that easy, because the friend that you're talking to has a big piece of machinery in front of his face. So it's really like talking to Terminator 2."

Despite the inherent surreal-ism of acting natural (and funny and completely at ease) in front of an ever-constant camera's eye, Keeps has managed to find both inspiration and, believe it or not, some hope for humanity within the various demands of his new job.

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"America isn't the most supportive country in terms of advocacy for the arts. All that has obviously died at the hands of the Republican Party." And, he adds with a sigh, "the religious right doesn't want to see people express themselves, unless you're doing stained glass windows for churches.

"But having said that, the gay community has a long tradition of recognizing and helping to introduce the rest of the world to great art. So with Art & the City, I like to think I'm helping to continue that tradition."