Art as central in the curriculum

How could we position “art” as central in the school curriculum and avoid using it simply as motivation for more “rigorous” disciplines? (Art is pleasurable, “but that pleasurableness does not mean the arts are to be used simply to ‘balance’ what is thought of as the cognitively rigorous, the analytical, the rational, and the serious. Nor should the arts be used as motivation – Green, p. 25)