One of the most successful traveling exhibitions of the past year, “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” generated critical acclaim and enormous attendance, demonstrating the hunger for such programming. The fall cultural calendar in major museums promises to be among the most diverse ever, with solo exhibitions devoted to artists including Teresita Fernández, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu and Mark Bradford.

Many organizations that support art institutions are demanding more. New York City, for instance, now requires diversity reporting from the cultural institutions it subsidizes. Beyond the numbers, the fact that the city will hold institutions accountable is starting to shift the focus away from merely seeking donations.

Major arts foundations — from Annenberg to Walton — are emphasizing diversity and inclusion in their grant-making. By doing so, they are offering funds that are not contingent on naming rights for new buildings, but rather to build more diverse staffs and invest in a broader range of stories, of which there are still too few examples.

And yet, everything that moves an institution forward, or holds it back, can be traced to its board. So, boards need to include members from more diverse perspectives and backgrounds. After all, no institution in a democracy that aspires to reflect society, or serve the public, can do so without representing the communities that constitute it.

To engage diverse leaders, museums should redefine the terms of trusteeship. At a time when institutions face greater pressure than ever to raise resources, their boards have veered too far toward only appointing trustees with wealth. But we know there are other valuable forms of capital not easily measured in dollars and cents. And so boards need to stop seeing diversity as subtracting from their annual revenue, but rather as adding strength. Diversity helps them attract new visitors, artists, communities and constituencies.

In other words, museum boards must move from tokenism to transformation — the kind of transformation that only meaningful inclusion can bring.