When the world insists that 'Scientific Logic' is the only epistemology, and when the 'Free Enterprise System' dictates the worth of one's actions, then Art is the saviour, the human impulse that re-connects the physical world with the spiritual world (see Thomas Aquinus).  By this I mean that Art, by definition, gets its raison d'etre from human impulses not measurable by these other two criteria.  
Art today justifies our impulses, our non-directed impulses toward Beauty, our non-directed need to create something that didn't exist before us and would not exist if not for us. 
The term "Beauty" is Art's companion, if we define Beauty as a balance, an impulse toward order, a recognition of the world's "rightness" despite the everyday "wrongness" that seems to want to inundate us.  
Today Art redeems our species.

In fact I am waving, waving.
Small in the clouds, but waving, waving.
Does anyone see
a soul worth saving?

So when will you come?
Do you think you are watching, watching
a man shaking crumbs
or pegging out washing?

I am trying and trying.
The heat behind me is bullying, driving,
but the white of surrender is not yet flying.
I am not at the point of leaving, diving.

A bird goes by.
The depth is appalling. Appalling
that others like me
should be wind-milling, wheeling, spiralling, falling.

Are your eyes believing,
believing
that here in the gills
I am still breathing.

But tiring, tiring.
Sirens below are wailing, firing.
My arm is numb and my nerves are sagging.
Do you see me, my love. I am failing, flagging.

This is what makes art powerful."

Studies have shown that “the arts enhance the process of learning. The systems they nourish, which include our integrated sensory, attentional, cognitive, emotional, and motor capacities, are, in fact, the driving forces behind all other learning” (Jensen, 2001).