Art \'ärt\ n: 1. Skill that comes through experience. 2. The uses of skill and creativity especially in the making of things that are beautiful to look at, listen to, or read.

For numerous reasons, the most difficult word to define without starting endless argument! Many definitions have been proposed. At least art involves a degree of human involvement-- through manual skills or thought-- as with the word "artificial," meaning made by humans instead of by nature. Definitions vary in how they divide all that is artificial into what is and isn't art. The most common means is to rely upon the estimations of art experts and institutions.

Artists, museum curators, art patrons, art educators, art critics, art historians, and others involved with art change their ideas about it over time. Early in the twentieth century, for instance, artists expanded the definition of art to include such things as abstraction, collage, and ready-mades. Even in the second half of the twentieth century, the art world expanded its definition of art to include textiles, costumes, jewelry, photography, video, concepts, and performances as art. Only in the last ten or twenty years works of various native peoples have come to be considered art rather than artifacts.

However, people of some cultures do not (or refuse to) refer to some works as "art." Because of this, many people have taken to using the broader terms material to culture or visual culture when referring to such works. No American Indian language includes such a word as art. The Japanese created such a word only after coming into contact with European ideas.

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