This study incorporates gray correlation analysis from gray statistical theory to assess the quality of traditional culture and art education. It establishes an evaluation index system and a gray correlation analysis model, examining the relationship between contemporary art education and traditional culture. The model is applied to identify the correlation, key characteristics, and principal influencing factors of traditional Chinese culture and art education in higher education institutions. Additionally, it examines the advantages of random sequences of factors through specific data processing techniques. The structural model tests the influencing factors on the quality of traditional culture and art education, with an analysis of path coefficients. The results showed that 97.4% of teachers chose traditional culture and art teaching resources, mainly by referring to the network aspect. The results of the weight distribution indicate that the teaching process U3 (0.3613) is the most important in traditional culture and art teaching, and the innovative activities in teaching content (0.8113) hold the largest weight. The top three gray correlation values of the indicators of the second-level factor layer are U43>U22>U32. The direct influence effect of excellent traditional culture permeating the teaching process is 0.232, which has the greatest influence on the quality of teaching. The direct impact of excellent conventional culture permeating teaching content is 0.184, which has the second largest influence on teaching quality. This paper successfully constructs a gray correlation model to analyze the relationship between traditional culture and contemporary art, which has high scientific validity.