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Being a museum docent is about helping people see vivid and amazing images everyday and in every place.

"Art is everywhere but I think you have to be sensitized to it. You have to be sensitized to look and that magic moment of 'hey look at that,'" says University of Arizona Museum of Art docent Ed Warner.

A docent's duty is also about helping people see, appreciate, and interpret an art museum.

Warner is one of 30 to 40 docents at the museum and has been a volunteer in this position for the last two years. He mostly leads tours. He retired after a career as a photographer, saying, "I have a lot of familiarity with scene, and visualizing, and presentation."

Warner became a docent to get more involved with paintings and sculptures. He loves explaining to tours why something hangs in a museum.

"When you look at great art, what you usually have, not in all cases, but what you do have is a great story well told. That's why it's great art," he explains. Warner has favorite pieces of art because they have especially fascinating stories.

Each age group is receptive to the stories, but he does prefer children's groups over other groups. "Children are a pleasure because they see and they tell you they see." He says children aren't concerned with wrong answers and if they're being judged. "They're always bringing things out that no one sees or that they see in a unique way and have no fear of talking about it."

Adults are more self-conscious, assuming there's hidden meaning in the artwork. Warner says, "We're afraid of giving the wrong answer. You ask the questions. They're looking for your expression to find out what the right answer is."

Curator of education Carol Petrozzello says Warner and the troop of docents are important to the museum. "We get many first time museum visitors. They've never been in an art museum and so if we were just to talk about technical terms in art we'd put them to sleep," she says.

Petrozzello oversees the docent program and also works on educational and outreach projects. She says each volunteer has a gift, but says Warner's passion is special. "He has taken retirement to the level that many people aspire to and he's decided that what he wants to do is research and explore history."

Warner says history and fantastic images of the present are what visitors see as they enter the museum doors. "The collection here, it's very eclectic and has a tremendous amount of breadth. There's always something you can relate to something you can talk about."

He encourages people to visit the museum. It's the same desire that Petrozzello has. "Really, if they'd come to museum that would be the most rewarding thing we could have," she says.