This study aims to reconsider the meaning of art education by viewing it not as a subject limited to emotional expression or sensory experience, but as a domain of cognitive education that organizes and expands human thinking. Based on the discussions of Goodman, Gardner, Efland, Arnheim, Eisner, and Smith, the study examines the cognitive paradigm of art education and explores imagination, creativity, and critical thinking as its core concepts. The findings suggest that imagination should be understood as the ability to reconstruct experience and knowledge into new meaning, creativity as a structure of thinking that involves problem finding, generating, selecting, and revising alternatives, and critical thinking as a cognitive process of examining reasons and contexts while reflectively regulating one’s own judgment. On this basis, the study proposes a cognitively oriented model of art instruction consisting of sensory exploration, image construction, problem finding, divergent ideation, convergent judgment, and visualization with media inquiry. The study ultimately suggests that art education should be repositioned as a central subject that fosters imagination, creativity, and critical thinking in an integrated way.