The late philosopher and writer Sir Roger Scruton famously said: “I want to persuade you that beauty matters; that it is not just a subjective thing, but a universal need of human beings. If we ignore this need we find ourselves in a spiritual desert.” The award-winning classically-trained painter Kathleen Carr founded the Chicago-based non-profit the Catholic Art Institute (CAI) because she felt that we had already drifted into that desert, she wrote in an email. “Today our cultural heritage of beauty is threatened. Within academia, in major art institutions, in our culture at large, and regrettably, within the church itself, traditional standards of beauty are often seen as irrelevant or are directly attacked,” she said. The CAI exists to quench our inherent thirst for beauty. The institute ardently focuses on “restoring a culture of beauty, truth, and goodness,” according to the institute’s website. To achieve such noble goals, the …