The Challenge of Contemporary Art for the Audience and the Docent
Contemporary art presents unusual challenges to an adult museum audience.  First, art can appear unusual due to the use of new materials in new forms.  For example, ordinary objects are appropriated into a work of art, taking on new meaning.  Second, art works are no longer readily sorted into easy to describe categories; painting and sculpture can be combined; photographs can function as documents of art as idea, process or performance; and art can appear as electronic media in video or computer form.  New art content can also challenge the viewer's norms in regard to "what is art." The great variety and new appearance of contemporary art can be very perplexing to the adult museum visitor and the docent responsible for facilitating the interpretation of the art.  Contemporary art can be so new that it can be totally lacking in historical context.  A lack of historical context prevents art from  being easily explained in a commonly understood language that effectively communicates the ideas and intent of the artist.  This process is complicated by the negative response the public viewer may have to the art they are considering.  How might a docent  understand and deal with the negative response of their tour group to new and unfamiliar art?

  Leo Steinberg's "Plight of the Public"
A useful model that illuminates the challenges to docents and their audiences with regard to contemporary art is described by art critic/historian Leo Steinberg in his 1962 essay "Contemporary Art and the Plight of Its Public".  Steinberg's main thesis is that resistance to new art is triggered by a sense of loss brought about by the artist's rejection  of widely understood and accepted characteristics and values in art.  Steinberg states that:

As to the "plight"- here I mean simply the shock of discomfort, or the bewilderment or the anger or the boredom which some people always feel, and all people sometimes feel, when confronted with an unfamiliar new style. When I was younger, I was taught that this discomfort was of no importance, firstly because only philistines were said to experience it (which is a lie), and secondly because it was believed to be of short duration.  This last point certainly appears to be true.  At any rate, no style of these last hundred years has long retained its early look of unacceptability.  Which would lead one to suspect that the initial rejection of so many modern works was a mere historical accident (Steinberg:  1962, 5).

May we not the drop this useless, mythical distinction between- on one side- creative, forward looking individuals whom we call artists, and on the other side- a sullen, anonymous, uncomprehending mass, whom we call the public? ...In other words, my notion of the public is functional.  The word "public" for me does not designate any particular people; it refers to a role played by people, or to a role into which people are thrust or forced by a given experience (Steinberg: 1962, 5).

I know that there are people enough who are quite genuinely troubled over certain shifts as they occur in art.  And this ought to give to what I call  "The Plight of the Public" a certain dignity.  There is a sense of loss, of sudden exile, of something willfully denied- sometimes a feeling that one's accumulated culture or experience is hopelessly devalued, leaving one open to spiritual destitution (Steinberg: 1962, 7).

Millions of artists create; only a few thousands are discussed or accepted by the spectator and many less again are consecrated by posterity.  In the last analysis,  the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius; he will have to wait for the verdict of the spectator in order that his declarations take a social value and that, finally, posterity includes him in the primers of Art History (Duchamp: 1957, 138). 

Let us consider, two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art:  the artist on one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity.  To all appearences, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from some labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.  If we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state of consciousness on the aesthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it.  All his decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, or even thought out (Duchamp:  1957, 138).

Duchamp defines this process with a mathematical metaphor:

But before we go further, I want to clarify our understanding  of the word "art"- to be sure, without an attempt to a definition.  What I have in mind is that art can be good, bad or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way that bad emotion is still emotion.  Therefore, when I refer to "art coefficient", it will be understood that I refer not only to great art, but I am trying to describe the subjective mechanism which produces art in a raw state- a l'etat brut- good,  bad, or indifferent (Duchamp:  1957, 139).

In the creative act, the artist goes from intention to realization through a chain of of totally subjective reactions. His struggle toward the realization is a series of efforts, pains, satisfactions, refusals, decisions which also cannot and must not be fully self-conscious, at least on the aesthetic plane.  The result of this struggle is a difference between the intention and its realization, a difference which the artist is not aware of.  Consequently, in the chain of reactions accompanying the creative act, a link is missing... this difference between what he intended to realize and did realize, is the personal "art coefficient" contained in the work.  In other words, the personal "art coefficient" is like an arithmetical relation between the unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally expressed (Duchamp:  1957, 139).

To avoid a misunderstanding, we must remember that this "art coefficient" is the personal expression of art "a l'etat brut", that is, still in a raw state, which must be "refined" as pure sugar from molasses, by the spectator; the digit of this coefficient has no bearing whatsoever on his verdict.  The creative act takes another aspect when the spectator experiences the phenomenon of transmutation; through the change from inert matter into a work of art, an actual transubstantiation has taken place, and the role of the spectator is to determine the weight of the work on the aesthetic scale... All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifactions and thus adds his contribution to the creative act (Duchamp 1957:  139-40).

The Role of Inquiry
There is a general perception that the docent is in the business of providing illuminating information to their tour audience regarding the art that they are viewing.  With regard to very new contemporary art, there is a desire for reassurance by the audience that the docent can provide an interpretation of the unfamiliar work that they see before them.  A personal interpretation of a work of contemporary art by a docent can be extremely risky due to the fact that it may misinterpret what is known about the ideas and intent of the artist and thereby give the audience an inaccurate account of the artist's work.  Research is an  essential element of a successful docent tour.  Reading articles and reviews  and attending a curator-led walkthrough of a given exhibition may illuminate the content of the work and the artist's intent.  However, information alone does not insure competence in providing a tour that is personally enriching for an adult group. The docent must find a way to assuage the sense of the loss the audience may feel in viewing a new and unfamiliar work of contemporary art.  Most importantly, the docent needs to  honor the self-directed character of an audience who are functioning as  adult learners, facilitating their desire to gain further understanding of a work of art.  By merely lecturing on the factual results of research, the docent runs the risk of appearing as an"expert" who in reality has little more information to go on than their audience as regards the direct experience of new and unfamiliar art. The audience's desire to learn is excluded by the docent who exclusively presents factual statements about the art rather than framing questions that stimulate discussion with the tour audience and allow them to contribute their experience of the art to  the content of the tour.  As opposed to a factual, didactic presentation, the audience-centered questioning method of inquiry is a more inclusive approach that can aid the audience in finding new art content and meaning  to replace that which has been perceived to have been lost.  It is  essential that the docent and their audience become partners in the exploration of new art by the process of inquiry, and engage "creatively" with a work of art as Marcel Duchamp has proposed.

Varieties of Inquiry
A process of inquiry between docents and their adult audience honors the self-directed character of adult learning.  The docent can present directed questions that channel the inquiry toward the themes of the docent's tour design or more open-ended questions which stimulate the audience to explore more deeply the works presented, and the relationhip between them.  Inquiry empowers the audience and opens the possibility of exploration of the work of art in its emerging contemporary context.  Questions can be framed that allow the tour group to bring their day - to - day experience to bear on the work of art before them.  Directed questions give a tour of contemporary art a given focus, and allow the docent to periodically engage the audience while making salient observations on the factual character of the work.  On the other hand, open-ended questions do not need to be answered immediately, and engage the adult tour audience in an ongoing process of inquiry that hopefully extends beyond the duration of the tour, enriching the experience of the audience members as active participants in the process of integrating the experience of modern and contempoary art into their everyday experience. 

Conclusion
Make Statements, Make Connections, A docent-led tour is effective when the audience is empowered to join in the process of inquiry. Intuitive and perceptive connections between works of art are the "scaffold" on which this inquiry process turns.  As a self-directed adult learner, the docent investigates the modern and contemporary art in their museum through time, becoming knowledgeable of the various factual information available on the work.  At the same time, and more importantly, the docent is also becoming increasingly aware of the concrete, visual presence of the work in the gallery; this is the reality the novice museum visitor first encounters, not the factually based information about the work.  As this sensitivity to the concrete nature of works evolves on the part of the docent, it becomes increasingly possible to link works on a tour on this basis.  The audience can participate in this process through the pathway of open-ended inquiry, sharing their insights on given works with the docent.  The docent, in turn, can  incorporate these insights into the tour, perhaps deviating from the planned tour pathway to accommodate the paricipation of audience members.  This process of discovering connections between various works of art builds a context that seeks to assuage the "plight" that Leo Steinberg describes, by facilitating the "creative" role as described by Duchamp.  The docent is the mediator of this growth of understanding that moves from cultural loss to participation in the creation of a new and evolving cultural reality. 


References
Duchamp, Marcel
"The Creative Act". talk given to American Federation of the Arts, Houston, 1957.  from:  Salt Seller- The Writings of Marcel Duchamp.  Edited by Michel Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson, Oxford University Press, 1973.  reprinted as The Writings of Marcel Duchamp, Da Capo Press, New York, 1989.

Steinberg, Leo
"Contemporary Art and the Plight of its Public" Harper'sMagazine, January, 1962, from Leo Steinberg:   Other Criteria- Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art.  Oxford University Press, New York, 1972.