The docents are all avid art lovers and it wasn't difficult to start the discussion with them. I did not ask them to raise their hands before making remarks about the work, as I thought that they are adults and are capable of carrying on a civil conversation, but this made it difficult at times to really facilitate the discussion and to ask specifically the second question, but in general it went very smoothly. Afterwards they also enthusiastically discussed the pros and cons (from their perspective) of VTS. One noted that he felt like the VTS process draws him in more than just looking, and that it "forced [his] brain to start putting the pieces together." Another noted that as art historians, we often talk "around" the paintings without ever really looking at the work, and valued VTS for encouraging that aspect. Someone else really thought the group discussion was important because they could incorporate others' ideas with their own to come to conclusions.
All agreed that they found the process somewhat frustrating though, as naturally at the end they all wanted more information, and I had not really done any research beforehand to be able to feed their appetite. I should have known better! But then they all also agreed that it is sometimes good to leave people "wanting more" and encouraging them to do more research on their own. They also noted that VTS highlights the viewer's experience which is important, and sometimes overlooked by docents.
Finally, I thought it was interesting that they said that my restatements of their observations were not patronizing (yay!) and made it seem like I was participating in the discussion. I wondered if this was a good thing, or maybe meant that I was not being neutral enough. These are people that I am pretty comfortable around, and I might have been a little less formal than is really necessary to be neutral. I also know that on a couple of occasions I did sort of add to the second question saying, for instance, "What do you see that makes you say that this is the older sister?" and wondered if this was an acceptable version of the question. Because they were throwing out ideas so quickly, it felt necessary to clarify which ideas I was addressing, which goes back to my error in not asking them to raise their hands at the beginning. It felt smooth and natural, and I think everyone found the process generally satisfactory.
