In a fast-paced world, asinnajaq likes to take things slow.

As a guest curator at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, asinnajaq, a 32 year-old artist who uses all lowercase letters in her name, has been working on a new exhibition of Inuit art for a few years now; she’s not quite sure how long.

“Time is as meaningless as it ever has been to me,” said asinnajaq, a soft-spoken Inuk from the northern Quebec village Inukjuak, in a video call to discuss the exhibition, “uummaqutik, essence of life,” to open Nov. 8.

Her colleague, Léuli Eshraghi, 38, who is of Samoan and Persian descent and was brought on last year as the 164-year-old museum’s first curator of Indigenous practices, called this intentional slowing down “working at the speed of relationships.”

And relationships are the heart of the change that is happening at the M.M.F.A.

Over the past five years or so, the team there has seen a marked shift in conversation around exhibitions. Questions of cultural appropriation, sensitivity and decolonization have been raised, amid a groundswell of interest from the museum-going public.

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It is part of a broader story as museums navigate an identity crisis, grappling with the question of whether they should simply be places that exhibit and research artifacts, or should actively engage with political and social issues.

And they face changing expectations from visitors and their own curators alike, with people concerned about whether existing practices are truly inclusive, or if they are steeped in colonial habits and perspectives that need to change.

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