What is art?

On Tuesday in our lecture on public art, one of the pieces that we looked at was entitled "Tilted Arc", and it took the form of a a metal wall-like structure stretching across a kind of courtyard area. The work was funded and created as a piece of art. However, the area apparently had a lot of pedestrian traffic, and those pedestrians didn't like that the arc got in the way of their walking. Eventually, so many people complained about the inconvenience of the arc that it got torn down and turned into scrap metal. I can't say that I have a strong opinion about whether or not such a structure counts as art, or whether or not it is "good" art, but let's just take a moment to think about anything that someone created with the intention of it being art, on such a large scale, get turned into scrap metal. Like, that's not even what I'm going to write about in this blog entry, but just think about that. I feel like that's just disrespectful.
Anyway, we learned that when asked, the artist said that the fact that it disrupted foot traffic was something that he liked about the piece. This obviously raises questions about what art actually is. I know it's a kind of a cliched question, but this particular debate over the presence of the "Tilted Arc" really made me think about it...
Generally, the every-day person seems to bade the value of art more on the concept of beauty than on anything else. Honestly, until now, I've been thinking in the same terms, except I've been constantly re-evaluating my definition of beauty. Instead, I now find myself asking why I even feel that beauty should be the standard by which we are tempted judge art.
Let's take literature as a comparison (how predictable of me, since that's my major): we long ago stopped judging literature solely based on whether or not it was pleasant or enjoyable to read. Certainly, people still value pieces of writing for this reason, but they also value literature (in all it's forms) if it is informative, funny, challenging, heart-breaking, or comforting. You could argue that beauty is coupled with some of these characteristics, but that is not true in every case. We value Johnathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" because it is darkly humorous, and because it draws attention to concerning flaws in the society of Britain at the time--we don't value you it because we think it's pleasant to read about the eating of children.
The Tilted Arc completely changed the flow of that particular courtyard, and it seems like perhaps that was part of the artist's intention.
Maybe this is another case of there being a gap between the general public and the art world. I feel like people who are serious artists (and by "serious" I mean serious about art, not necessarily super successful or famous), and people with a bit more of an education in art seem to value art work for more of a variety of reasons than simply "beauty".
Maybe Tilted Arc's inconvenience to the pedestrians of the area should be viewed as contributing to what might make it art. I don't know--can inconvenience be a characteristic that can make art good? If a piece of writing was inconveniencing large numbers of people it might be more likely to be valued...although I don't know what would equate physically forcing people to walk around a large object to get to work, in writing...I feel like this blog post has been all over the place. Maybe I shouldn't have tried to answer such a big question...it's a collection of thoughts anyhow.