This document is intended to help schools deal with the increasing ethnic diversity of school populations. The arts can provide a context, a means of expression, and a way of learning about cultural values and beliefs that will help to dispel cultural misperceptions among the nation's youth, and to foster cross cultural acceptance and understanding. While the visual arts and music provide a context for the purpose of discussing and illustrating the goals proposed, the framework is flexible enough to allow for its application in the teaching of any of the arts. A literature review on the subject of multicultural education, from its ideological underpinnings to its effect on teacher education, is included, as well as reviews of curriculum material currently in use throughout the nation. Some examples of possible curriculum additions are offered. The document reviews the historical background of cultural diversity in the United States. Five goals for multicultural arts education are listed: (1) to encourage the transformation of existing curricula to enable students to view concepts, issues, events, and themes from a multicultural perspective; (2) to infuse multicultural education into existing curriculum structures; (3) to implement multicultural education across the curriculum, not merely as a separate element; (4) to provide strategies for working with and enhancing the existing programs of those teachers, supervisors, and curriculum directors who have begun to infuse a multicultural context into those programs; and (5) to encourage the formulation of a systematic and comprehensive evaluation process of determining the quality of multicultural content and methodology in curricula and instructional materials. (DK)