To television viewers, David Conrad is Jim Clancy, former firefighter and husband of Jennifer Love Hewitt, who plays the title role in the successful series "The Ghost Whisperer."

To local theatergoers, he's the energetic man who produced, directed and starred in a recent production of "Burn This," a play staged at the New Hazlett.

But at the Kiski School in Westmoreland County, the tall, lean Swissvale native and 1985 alumnus is the board member who notices every blank wall -- even those in stairwells -- and wanders around with a drill in his hand so he can hang art.

This spring, Mr. Conrad donated 151 artworks valued at $300,000 to his alma mater, a private boys boarding school with an enrollment of around 200. The 41-year-old actor's eclectic collection includes work by well-known local artists Robert Qualters and Kevin Kutz, photographs of Homestead by Charlee Brodsky, Japanese woodblock prints and a colorful quilt made by African Americans during the early 20th century.

"He just tried to find intellectually challenging art and put it up. Because of that, they ended up with something much better" than traditional landscapes, said Sam Berkovitz, owner of Concept Art Gallery in Regent Square.

Mr. Berkovitz is especially fond of Craig McPherson's dramatic mezzotints that show Braddock's Edgar Thomson mill and the Clairton coke works at night.

On a recent sunny day, Mr. Conrad led a reporter on a tour of the art that he gave to the school. He has been collecting for a decade and visits galleries in Pittsburgh, London, England and Milwaukee. He maintains a mental checklist of the school's blank walls because his love affair with art continues. He particularly likes large artworks.

"What this place cries out for is sculpture," he said, pointing to a lawn across from the Old Main building. He envisions the day when sculptures by Richard Serra or Mark di Suvero are placed on the grounds.

Inside the red-brick Swank Student Center, visitors will see the work of Colin Noonan, 28, whose oil painting "German Motor" is a kind of contemporary still-life of an old Volkswagen engine topped with a red mechanic's rag. Mr. Noonan paints in a Strip District garage where Mr. Conrad takes his car.

On the opposite wall, Fabrizio Gerbino's rendering of locks turned on their side is a painterly study in color. Mr. Gerbino, who is from Florence, Italy, paints in a studio in Stowe.

The architecture of the new student center, which was dedicated June 5, was partly inspired by the design of an Episcopal church on Bainbridge Island off the coast of Seattle, Mr. Conrad said. The building's back wall is practically all windows and the spacious great room rather like the nave of a church. On the other side of a 42-foot tall stone fireplace is a long, curved coffee bar and a large-screen television. In a first-floor hallway, visitors see a photograph by British artist David Dawkins, who captured painter Lucian Freud at work. The arresting image shows Freud painting Queen Elizabeth II, who is dressed in a blue suit.

The second-floor offices of the Swank Student Center are adorned by colorful gouaches on Japanese paper that depict irises. Displayed in simple Arts and Crafts-style wooden frames, these artworks served as ads for Yokohama Nursery Co., which supplied the Japanese cherry trees that grow on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

Besides this major donation, Mr. Conrad will commission art each year along with fellow alum Kris Rockwell. The commission is called Will's Gift in memory of William Turley, a Kiski math teacher who died in 1998.

"To me, he was about finding inspiration in places you thought there was none," Mr. Conrad said.

This year's recipient of the $5,000 commission is sculptor Alexi Morrissey.

By the end of next summer, the school will offer an audio tour of the art narrated by Mr. Conrad. Visitors will dial a number on their cell phones and press a number next to the art work to hear a description of it.

He hopes that the presence of the art collection at the school stimulates "artistic impulses from the heart and the gut." He likes hanging art in unlikely places, such as the Edouard Vuillard drawing of women reading in a salon that's beside a sink in a men's room.

A vividly colored quilt by African-American women, found in Allentown, Lehigh County, and made between 1910 and 1930, is displayed prominently in the student center.

"I think it's the finest thing in the collection," Mr. Conrad said, adding that he searched for an indigenous craft artwork that was "outside the academy."

On nearby walls are Leonard Baskin's dramatic black drawing of White Horse, a Snake Indian, and Kevin Kutz's "The Awakening of Spring." Kutz's whimsical rendering shows a woman with long blond hair resting in an old bed. It was painted on an old window frame, giving it added texture and impact.

One of Qualters' early paintings of a man picking apples in an orchard was inspired by the artist's first job. Mr. Conrad calls him "Pittsburgh's magical realist."

In the gymnasium, just inside a men's room door, is a black-and-white photograph of the original nine members of the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team. Next to a women's restroom is a photograph of a ballerina dancing on Heinz Field; next to the adjoining men's room is a picture of Roberto Clemente.

Inside the gymnasium building are two memorable pictures -- one of Honus Wagner's hands and another showing members of the Pittsburgh Steelers kneeling to pray in a Detroit locker room before taking the field to win Super Bowl XL.