Assessment is essential to all forms of work in the arts. Successful arts assessment concepts, patterns, and methods have evolved over many centuries. They are inherent in all arts teaching and central to art-making at all levels of proficiency and sophistication. And they work: achievements in the arts are among the highest in civilization. At present, these arts-based systems of assessment are increasingly pursued in a problematic context. Regnant assessment values and systems are often so highly technocratic, so narrowly focused on what can be counted easily, and so prosaically engineered for application on a massive scale that they are incompatible with the nature of arts assessment and regularly discount its value and its results. Means for responding and acting are needed that preserve the fundamental nature of arts teaching and learning. There are ways for those professionally concerned about the arts and arts teaching to reaffirm and rearticulate essential principles of artistic evaluation and, in the present environment, pursue applications of those principles in various forms of evaluation. Reaffirmation, rearticulation, and pursuit must be deeply rooted in an understanding of why these principles are essential for the progress of the arts disciplines and for arts-centered student learning. Such reaffirmation, rethinking, and rearticulation can establish the basis for explaining arts principles, achievements, and methods to others; debating when necessary; and ensuring the preservation of conditions that encourage the effective incorporation of new findings or capabilities in assessment into the ever-evolving assessment and evaluation systems developed by and suitable for the arts in ways that are compatible with their nature and the integrity of their practice.