Now, more than ever before, teachers in New Zealand are expected to address national curriculum principles and embrace culturally responsive pedagogies for teaching and learning with ethnically diverse students. In 2013 the New Zealand Census identified an increasing contrast between adult and youthful populations, with the greatest numbers of young people under 20 now coming from ethnically diverse groups. In contrast, art teachers remain predominantly European-New Zealand. As a European-New Zealand pre-service art teacher educator in the secondary school sector, I was prompted to focus on two professional imperatives: Increasing my emphasis on strategies for pre-service art teachers to embrace pedagogical competencies for teaching art with culturally diverse students; and critically engaging with practicing art teachers, through research in secondary schools, to gauge their cultural responsiveness to students. This paper offers a ‘snapshot’ of both imperatives.