Redefining Curatorial Leadership and Activating Community Expertise to Build Equitable and Inclusive Art Museums

Abstract Leadership in art museums is a changing construct: historically, these institutions were established as hierarchical, top‐down structures that prioritized sole expertise to dictate success. Today, museums are searching for ways to become more responsive, collaborative, and multivocal institutions that value community voices and expertise. A growing variety of museum professionals ask how to better reflect and integrate local communities within their museums. We share reflections, insights, and lessons learned from a multi‐year case study at the Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block (TMA), which focuses on redefining curatorial leadership as community‐based and collaborative to expand approaches to exhibition development and interpretation. The authors of this article highlight how network governance/collaborative leadership can be applied to curatorial practice to develop exhibitions rooted in collaborative stewardship, multivocality, and community‐based approaches. Here, leadership is defined as a way in which a museum influences its communities and vice versa. In addition, we discuss strategies for building multi‐directional and collaborative initiatives to shape a more equitable and inclusive museum.