Short answers, pulled from the story.
Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered on works that use creative or imaginative talents, expected to evoke a worthwhile experience through emotional power, conceptual ideas, technical proficiency, or beauty. There is no generally agreed definition, and its interpretation has varied greatly throughout history and across cultures.
In the Western tradition, the three classical branches of visual art are painting, sculpture, and architecture. A broader definition of the arts also includes theatre, dance, literature, music, film, and other media.
The more specific sense of art as an abbreviation for creative or fine art emerged in the early 17th century. Until the 17th century, art referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts or sciences.
A shell engraved by Homo erectus was dated to between 430,000 and 540,000 years old. The oldest piece of art found in Europe is the Riesenhirschknochen der Einhornhöhle, dating back 51,000 years and made by Neanderthals.
The first public museum of art in the world, the Kunstmuseum Basel, opened in the city of Basel, Switzerland, in 1661. The Musée du Louvre later opened as a public museum during the French Revolution in 1793.
Art has been disliked for reasons including religion, politics, nudity, and breaches of decorum. Examples include Michelangelo's The Last Judgment, Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe from 1863, and Andres Serrano's Piss Christ from 1989, which led to comments in the United States Senate about public funding of the arts.
Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, an ordinary urinal from 1917, is among the first examples of art using found, ready-made objects with no traditionally recognized set of skills. Duchamp once proposed that art is any activity of any kind.