Art has been always considered a key part of all cultures around the world, but recently it is not appreciated as used to be in the past people is focusing more on sience, technology and business.
In my opinion, the reason of that could be because in the past art was the only way for the nation or the country to self identity for example from the scluptures in ancient Greece and ancient Egypt archeologists could identify the era that came from even the artist who did it depends on the material for example the material that have been used, the colors, techniques and even the sculpture postures all of these information told us when and where it comes from and also the story or the myth about it, and also depend on the material that used we can say how much rich this country in this period of time.
Moreover, history has been told through the literature we have known some wars from arts for example the Illiad by Homer some parts of the work is not true but we can get some kind of information from it, even myths considered to be a part of country history as it used to reflect the politics, ecnomics and even the social stuff during this period of time, as the time goes and people start having more ways to use to refelect that than just painting or writing a poetry, technology and sicence are considered nowadays the most important ways for development and country raise then because of science and technology need money for development and improvements the business is always necessary to focus on, despite arts still important but probably not important as technology, science and business.
Overall, art used to be the most important thing in the past, but because of the constant changes in the world and the current needs people are focusing more on science, technology and business but the arts still important as it will always be the self identiy to nations.