This essay describes the social changes since the 1960s that have divided art from culture and married creativity to material profit. Today the rapid growth of cultural consumption and the contribution of cultural services to the wider economy have brought about a crisis in cultural policy which has devastated the arts. So trapped are the arts in the language of metrics that their real intention can no longer be understood. To protect the value of arts and culture，the cultural sector has to make a rigorous，open-eyed engagement with the marketplace，not to retreat from it.