In response to the art question, I find it dubious that an organization like NAQT can't dig up one solid art editor. I personally know like five.
I think the real issue is, they don't particularly care. In starting DACQ, for instance, my coworkers and I took it upon ourselves to write questions that were both useful and appropriate for high-level teams (and more importantly, emulated high levels of competition) and were just as, if not more, useful (not to mention accessible) to teams farther down the ladder. It's possible, but it's challenging. It's sure considerably more challenging than "FTPE, identify the wives of three guys who fought in the Trojan War (Odysseus, Priam, Agamemnon)." That bonus is not very good. It tells someone who knows very little about those figures and their wives next to nothing about any of them, and is even more pointless for a team with a fairish myth person or better, who will knock out a quick 30 (NOTE: not from current IS or anything, from an HSNCT a few years ago). But it takes like 30 seconds to write. An in-depth bonus with that same answer selection, even that seem lead-in, that made teams really earn their 30, that made provided new players with something of an idea of who those people were and gave experienced players new knowledge about them (or even did like 1 of those 3 things) is more of a time and effort investment. It's an investment that you see frequently among the better packet-submission teams and obviously, for all the other complaints this year, in ACF. I'm not saying NAQT doesn't care about their questions, but if their are people writing for them who don't care as much as they should (say, an art editor), I wouldn't think it would be hard to find someone to step in and fill that kind of a role.
EDIT:
I think part of the reason that Fine Arts and RMP don't show up too much in NAQT's high school sets is that the courses aren't standard requirements in most high schools. Yes, most schools do offer electives in these areas, but the percentage of students taking classes in these subjects is far less than in history, science, literature, or math. Since NAQT writes for the nation and not just the top teams with its IS-sets, I'm assuming that they feel that simply putting in even very easy RMP or Fine Arts questions often come off as being very difficult to a lot of schools because they've never really been exposed to these questions.
Dude, I guess I missed my high school's elective on Pacific Island geography, Oklahoma City, and potatoes. Seriously, most schools don't have current events classes, geography classes (not counting fifth grade), pop culture classes, or classes on the random crap NAQT thinks it will be "fun" to write tossups on as part of their core curriculum. Those things comprise like close to 40% of the current IS canon. Also, most schools can't offer their kids astronomy classes, and relying on four years of English to cover you for all lit questions is ludicrous. People can look at art, read about mythology (much like they can read about, you know, literary characters. In books). High school students also frequently have a very high chance of being exposed to music in school (much higher than their chance of being exposed to the history of the tuber), but I'm willing to bet music theory doesn't get significantly more exposure than vegetables these days. I know you weren't saying that this is admirable or defending it or anything, but the notion that a tossup on Racine is more accessible to high schoolers than Constable or Myron because people can take French classes is ridiculous. Again, this is quizbowl, not AP exam trivia night. Nobdoy is calling for 2/2 Pontormo and Bronzino here, but there's a pretty big gap between that and 8 art tossups in 14 24-question packets.
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