After providing a historical context for art education, this text explores the implications for art education from the broad themes found in art across the cultures. Discussions focus on how art education programs promote cross cultural diversity in art, affirm and enhance self-esteem and pride in students' cultural heritage, and address issues of ethnocentricism, bias, stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination, and racism. Using discipline-based art education as a framework, the paper examines existing art education curricula and suggests ways to design and implement a curriculum for multicultural art education. Contains 211 references. (MM)