The economics of the arts is sixty years old. After a few isolated anticipations, since the Sixties it attracted and still attracts a growing community of scholars. The combination of artistic and productive factors generates uncertainties about the effective and consistent approach to choices and strategies, between the two extremes of a special area where only experts can adopt the appropriate decisions on the one hand, and an ordinary area where everything is simply subject to the rules of the marketplace on the other. This chapter aims at focusing upon the specific elements of art and culture. Although not synonyms, art and culture are certainly connected: while art is the stock of objects and actions aimed at expressing a wide range of visions, culture is the flow of critical interpretations that arise from the eloquence of creativity, within the dialogue between supply and demand. In the industrial paradigm, culture has been viewed as the shared jargon of the ruling class; in the emerging economy, where knowledge and experience are the most important sources of value, culture is widening its scope, from ritual enjoyment in conventional spaces to shared practice of critical thought in both the analogical and the digital dimensions. The textbook logic proves insufficient to interpret the cultural value chain. A value-based approach should be adopted, focusing on the evolving spirit of time; in the light of the growing importance of narrative trails in many areas of the economy, new technical and critical analyses and interpretations of the economic value of culture can be crafted.