Why art is valuable, so much so that art theft is a $6 billion per year enterprise. Discuss the significance in both Western and non-Western civilizations.

There are two main reasons why art is so valuable in both of these spheres: 1) simply due to the scarcity of the pieces, in that a single artist may only create a handful of pieces during his or her lifetime, and 2) that lots of pieces of art have a deep cultural significance for a state or family.