Museums and cultural institutions have long acted as a sort of glue, binding disparate individuals together through a shared interest in art, culture and the humanities. Tthere are nearly 850 million visits annually to American museums — more than attendance for all major league sporting events and theme parks combined.

This week, when the College Art Association opens its annual conference in Washington, nearly 4,000 artists, art historians, educators, museum directors and curators will descend on the nation's capital for in-depth discussion of issues in the arts today. Some of those conversations will be about how the landscape is changing: Simply bringing visitors through a museum's doors is no longer enough; museums must reach outward and stretch programming into new spaces to better serve their communities.

Along these lines, this month, the Phillips Collection entered its 95th year on the heels of announcing two very important community partnerships: one with the University of Maryland in College Park, and the other with Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus (THEARC) in Southeast Washington.

The partnership with the University of Maryland is transformative, aligning one of the nation's pre-eminent public research universities with America's first museum of modern art. (Our permanent collection includes works from Vincent Van Gogh, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jacob Lawrence and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.) It immediately creates a new arts curriculum for UMD students, joint publication of a book prize, collaborative music programming, graduate fellowships in a variety of disciplines and community outreach opportunities, both in Washington, D.C., through public programs off-site and at the Phillips and in College Park through our work with Prince George's County Public Schools. We will also explore new conversations between art and science through a new postdoctoral fellowship in Virtual Culture, which will research emerging forms of virtual culture and the advancement of technology to enhance the museum visitor's experience.

This outward-facing approach by cultural institutions is being encouraged and fostered in exciting ways at the federal level as well. At the National Endowment for the Humanities, where I serve as a presidentially nominated member of the National Council on the Humanities, we recently awarded more than $400,000 in grants to 38 organizations across the country, including Gallaudet University in D.C., under a new grant program called Common Heritage, which allows local institutions to engage with members of the public to share materials important to their family or community histories. Through another new grant program, called Humanities in the Public Square, the NEH awarded $3.6 million to 21 community-based projects that put humanities scholars in dialogue with the public to help citizens grapple with challenging contemporary issues. Among these is a project called “Baltimore Stories” at the University of Maryland, College Park, which will bring together a consortium of Baltimore institutions for a public forum and community programs examining the ways in which narratives around race have shaped the life and culture of the city.

The Phillips Collection's other new partnership is with THEARC, now in the third phase of its expansion project — a 92,000-square-foot building expected to open in 2017. The Phillips will take up residence in the new space, offering free, high quality K-12 arts-integrated programs for D.C. teachers and students, as well as multigenerational art and wellness initiatives for residents east of the river.

As museum professionals gather to soak up the vast culture present in our nation's capital, and to talk about what we achieved, and what lies ahead, we must look to engage and inspire the next generation of artists, educators and museum professionals and to consciously seek out people of all ages and backgrounds. In our 95th year, the Phillips recognizes that our partnerships and the programming they inspire cannot be superficial or convenient, but must reflect deep engagement and commitment. Embracing a diversity of voices will ensure museums remain vibrant, well into the next century.

Dorothy Kosinski is director of the Phillips Collection museum and a member of the National Council on the Humanities. Twitter: @dkosinski53.