#346: Artworks as Designed Prompts: How Contemporary Art Organizes Gallery Talk

This study investigates how contemporary artworks serve as designed prompts that scaffold collaborative knowledge building in naturalistic gallery talk. Grounded in social constructivism, we report a two-case qualitative study from FAYM2024 in Tokyo: interactive gallery talks (seven adults, 20s–50s) paired with two interviews with the corresponding artists. Viewer transcripts were segmented into meaning units and coded for knowledge-building moves (proposal, visual evidence, challenge/revision, integration, holding ambiguity). Artist interviews were coded for designed prompts and evaluative remarks about audience responses. A joint alignment per artwork then contrasted artists’ stated design intentions with discourse trajectories, focusing on relations of alignment and productive divergence and evidencing each with thick excerpts. The study traces how artwork properties—as conceived by their creators—organize sense-making sequences in situ, and how divergences between intention and interpretation can open generative paths for discussion. These findings offer implications for gallery facilitation and the design of art-as-learning experiences.