Presented at the 1979 National Art Education Association Convention on the arts in special education, the paper focuses on studies of the aesthetic and therapeutic use of special art procedures with handicapped students. The art education needs of handicapped students are briefly discussed, along with the impact and implications of new legislation. Studies reviewed include those in which drawings and paintings served as tools for identifying and teaching concepts and cognitive skills traditionally associated with language, those in which special art procedures substituted for language in developing concepts such as space and order, those in which art procedures served aesthetic and therapeutic goals concurrently, and those justifying the high teacher expectations of the art abilities of deaf students. (DLS)