Cordelia thinking that an antique parquet wooden floor would have been preserved and safeguarded as a great work of art on Beta, but on Barrayar, they use it to dance on.

I had always assumed that the preservation and safeguarding had more to do with the scarcity and value of wood on Beta, and was less about the art/craftsmanship per se, but I could be persuaded otherwise...

I like what you suggest about the Barrayaran mentality lending itself to art that can be/should be used and enjoyed, and not preserved for the sake of preservation. Barrayar is by definition a world rich in natural resources, so it makes sense to me that they wouldn't think twice about things like wood flooring.

Beta, on the other hand, is a world with very few natural resources, so things made from natural materials must be consequently much more highly valued. There isn't, canonically, any poverty on Beta (which leads be to believe that there isn't any great individual wealth, either), so I don't know that it's an issue of Betans being able to afford beautiful things, but they're likely to be beautiful things made of the synthetics that everyone has access to.

I think you're right that the standards for beauty and art on Beta are probably more different from Earth-standard than those on Barrayar. Neither are perfect analogues for Earth, but Barrayar's culture is, I think, closer to ours (in positive and negative ways) than Beta is. Which is why my first instinct was to imagine a lack of poetry on Beta, rather than simply poetry of their own.