Abstract
This study explores the talk of viewers as they encountered paintings in an art gallery. An inductive analysis of conversations recorded between viewers and one of the researchers resulted in the identification of three categories of art talk: Evaluation, Attraction, and Storytelling. Further, the authors distinguish two design features governing this kind of talk, Narration and Reification.Viewers verbalize their experience of paintings in order to interactively manufacture meaning. This sense‐making process is consequential not merely for the viewers' understanding of the artwork but for their conception of the world, and of themselves and others in it. Perhaps most significant, viewers employ artwork as a material and symbolic resource in the ceaseless interactive fabrication of their own identities.
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