The culture of isolation in schools leaves many art educators feeling that they are, in a sense, islands. Working from the idea of an island, I use the geographic metaphor of an archipelago as a means to understand the tensions between isolation and collaboration related to professional development for art educators. In this article, I describe the potential for collaborative inquiry to transform professional learning in art education and discuss the challenges to implementing a collaborative model. I argue that a learner-directed collaborative approach best meets the diverse professional development needs of the art education archipelago and conclude with recommendations for overcoming the obstacles that stand in the way. (Contains 1 endnote and 1 figure.)