“Jim Morrison!” calls out one member of the tour, just after Gallery Guide Fran Bleviss explains that the portrait exhibition in this gallery is called “Light My Fire.”

It’s an impressive feat of memory – after all, the song was a smash hit for Morrison and The Doors back in 1967, and that was a long time ago. Furthermore, this visitor is part of an Art in the Moment tour, designed for people with varying degrees of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Later, the participating GGs agree that the moment was a very good example of one of the great joys of leading these tours. As Mary Rochon puts it, “You never know what will connect, and bring forth a memory and provoke real conversation.”

Fran gives two more examples, recalling the day one gentleman correctly identified the Daedalus and Icarus painting in the Dutch Gallery, and the day another pointed to a street scene in a Pisarro painting which reminded him of downtown Glasgow and said, “I know that corner! I grew up there and I can tell you everything all around that area.”

The approach for “Art in the Moment” was worked out with the Alzheimer’s Society of Canada. The tours themselves are offered by Gallery Guides who volunteer for this additional type of assignment and are trained for it.

“We’re there to give these visitors, and their caregivers or partners, an experience of art in a way they can appreciate,”  says Fran. “We focus on the painting right in front of us, and draw out what our visitors feel and think about it right in that moment.”

Mary nods, and adds, “Sometimes we can go beyond the moment. When we see that some visitors can engage more deeply, or make associations, we respond to that and go with them in the discussion.”

This particular mid-May tour is larger than usual, but Mary, Fran and another colleague, Charlene Livingstone, deftly rise to its logistical requirements. They start in the “Light My Fire” exhibition, where Fran first draws out thoughts about the striking woman-with-cigarette photo by Paul Graham called “Untitled #55.”

Fran also leads discussion about another two portraits in that same show, including Nan Goldin’s self-portrait, “My Bed, Hotel La Louisiane, Paris.”

With her prompting and questions, the group considers the fact that the woman herself is not visible, just the bed – but that the bed, and what’s on the bed, do amount to a self-portrait. When Fran tells them she’d learned that the photographer had led a fairly chaotic life, one tour member adds, “And not apologetic about it!”

Next, the Dutch Gallery, where Charlene and  Mary elicit thoughts about two paintings, including “Evisceration of a Roebuck with a Portrait of a Married Couple,” by Frans Snyder and Cornelis de Vos.

Some tour members don’t much like the painting at first, finding it too bloody and the couple too grim-faced. Then, with Mary (above), they begin to explore it. They identify animals in the painting, recall farm life familiar to some of them in earlier years, laugh a bit about the amount of showing-off this wealthy couple is doing. At the end of all that, most have warmed up to the painting, and enjoy it.

The care and welcome for these tour members starts literally at the front door when they arrive, and continues until they are back on their bus. This day, Fran finds herself leading an impromptu discussion about the Feature Staircase on the way out.

The Gallery Guides clearly enjoy leading these tours.  “I love to keep learning things myself, and I love to keep finding more ways to reach our visitors and share the art,” Fran says later over a cup of tea in Café AGO. Mary says, “I enjoy working with people who may have some kinds of limitations, and creating that moment of relationship, when we connect.”