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Ms. Stephen wasn’t being quite as officious as it might have seemed to an onlooker. Engaging strangers in unsolicited conversations about the art on display at the Guggenheim isn’t her hobby. It’s her job. She is a gallery guide, hired by the museum to safeguard the art and to engage people in conversation about it, acting as a human audio guide who is at least one part Doberman.

The job of the Guggenheim’s eight gallery guides is in some ways unique: although all of New York’s major museums have educational programs, only the Guggenheim hires people to mingle full time in the galleries, interacting with museum patrons in all their quirky diversity. And though she had been on the job only three weeks, Ms. Stephen had already noticed a recurring phenomenon. “Some people are really angry at contemporary art,� she said reflectively.

If the Guggenheim had simply needed better security, more guards could have been hired. The guides program exists because the public’s confusion about modern and contemporary art is alive and well, which is brought home to the guides every day.

“Modern art baffles,’ said Jim Fultz, the longest-serving guide, who was hired in 2004. “It alienates. It frustrates. But part of what we do is make them feel comfortable with it. A lot of people are afraid to ask questions. They don’t want to seem dumb about something they already feel is elitist.�

The program was introduced in 2004 after the previous year’s exhibition of Matthew Barney’s “Cremaster Cycle,’’ a notoriously opaque film epic featuring characters ranging from a satyr to fairies to a “queen of chain� (Ursula Andress).

“One of our senior executives reported that his friends were simply not getting the show,� said Kim Kanatani, the Guggenheim’s director of education. “It’s highly conceptual, and the audio guides were not working. It’s also a very noisy show.�

So the museum decided to shift some resources to education that is “visitor-centered rather than object-centered,� said Ms. Kanatani, contrasting the live gallery guides with the fixed script of a prerecorded tour. For some museumgoers the guides arrived just in time, ahead of Daniel Buren’s “Eye of the Storm,� a highly conceptual show in 2005 for which the artist left the walls of the Guggenheim’s already-dizzying rotunda largely bare, using mirrored panels and green tape to kaleidoscopic effect.

“At the Buren exhibition the European tourists were like, ‘Where’s the artwork?’ � said Dan Tsai, a 24-year-old with a philosophy degree who has been a guide for a year and a half. “Some of them got angry and wanted a refund. I said: ‘Slow down here. Besides seeing your reflection in these mirrors, what else do you see?’ �

Mr. Tsai added, “Our job is to get people to slow down.�

Much of the training focuses on body language. The guides, mostly in their 20’s and 30’s, are taught not to cross their arms since it communicates a lack of openness. They’re encouraged to approach visitors who seem receptive to talking, and then to linger in case questions come up. As in any service-industry position, making eye contact, along with a greeting, is a basic part of the job.

The guides also receive formal training in each exhibition in the form of drill sessions, sometimes from outside speakers.

Ryan Hill, the education manager of adult interpretive programs for the museum, runs the guides’ training program, which is more EST seminar than police academy. The guides do exercises in active listening and peripheral vision and act out scenes that simulate encounters between guides and visitors.

“We help them think on their toes,� Mr. Hill said.

But like the guards, the guides are also supposed to step in when someone decides that looking is not enough and that touching is the logical next step in art appreciation. The difference is that the guides are trained to turn an awkward moment into an opportunity for arts education.

“If they see someone going too close to a work, rather than reprimand them, they draw attention away from it and talk to them about it, asking what they like about it,� Mr. Hill said. “You’re turning a negative into a positive.�

The difference in demeanor between guides and guards is striking. “It’s good cop-bad cop, and the good cops cannot disguise themselves,� said Steve Ursell, the museum’s director of security.

For guides who take their own knowledge of modern art for granted, the visitors’ comments can be refreshing or just amusing.

“I overheard someone describe Salvador Dalí as, ‘He’s like a real painter, but everything’s melting,’ � said Joey Weiss, a 26-year-old guide who is also a figurative painter. “I thought that was hilarious.�

The guides rotate from gallery to gallery, and when Ms. Stephen is not explaining Zaha Hadid, she can sometimes be found amid paintings on paper by Jackson Pollock, which also elicit suggestions from patrons.

“One guy said we should have a naming contest for the untitled Pollocks,� Ms. Stephen said. “I said I’d bring it up at the next meeting.�

No amount of touchy-feely gallery-guide training can prepare them for unruly situations.

“The ‘Russia!’ show was schizo with the volume turned up,� Mr. Fultz said of the Guggenheim’s blockbuster survey last year of Russian art. “I had taught school in the South Bronx, and that was a bit like being a policeman. So that helped prepare me.�

THE job of professional museum lurker means making choices. Each guide has to decide when to make contact, and how to back off when he’s crossing the line from helpful to didactic. “Sometime it’s my job to play devil’s advocate,� said Mr. Fultz, who is 36 and an abstract painter.

A Russian visitor who stopped in front of Ilya Repin’s “Barge Haulers on the Volga� (1870-73), depicting workers who are possibly freed serfs nobly going about their job, briefed Mr. Fultz on the meaning of every single gesture in the painting.

“He had grown up with this work,� Mr. Fultz recalled. “I kept saying, ‘Couldn’t it be this instead?’ I just offered counterpoints.�

One day Mr. Fultz noticed a woman who seemed puzzled as she gazed upon an abstract painting by Kandinsky. Summoning his courage to tread the fine line between helpful and patronizing, he asked what she thought of it. She replied that she had a painting on her refrigerator done by her 3-year-old that was strikingly similar: for gallery guides the classic “My kid can do that’’ form of derision.

“I got her to look more closely,� Mr. Fultz said. “She dropped her judgmental side, and I let that lead to a discussion of Kandinsky’s views on rhythm and music. So she was somewhat open.�

When it comes to conversing about the art, the guides have learned, certain kinds of visitors are more difficult. Groups are tough because no one wants to appear uninformed in front of the others; couples have their own dynamic that often cannot be breached.

“Couples are difficult,� Mr. Fultz said. “They have their own thing going on. The art is used for one-upmanship.�

He added that he does not approach a woman directly if she is with a man, since the man will often seize her arm as if to block an advance.

Then again, he treads carefully with women who are on their own. “I’m 6-feet-2,� Mr. Fultz said. “I don’t approach women my age. They’ll assume I’m flirting with them.�

“Single women in New York are generally defensive, which is understandable,� he added. “But they often approach me to ask a question.�

Sometimes no approach is a good approach. During an exhibition of Paul Klee’s work last year Mr. Fultz encountered what he called an “archetypal New Yorker� lingering over one work.

“I’m a big Klee fan, and I said to him, ‘I’m curious, what are you noticing?’ � Mr. Fultz recalled. “He gives me the once-over and says, ‘Just save your spiel for someone else.’ �

He said he sympathized with the man, who may have been lost in an artistic reverie.

All of the guides reported moments of deep interaction that made the job enjoyable. At the current show of Pollock works on paper, an older woman approached Ms. Stephen and asked about the artist’s wife, “Why would Lee Krasner give these works in his name when he treated her so badly?�

It turned out that the visitor had strong feelings about the artist as a man because she had gone to school with Edith Metzger, a woman who died along with Pollock in his 1956 car crash.

“It brought back memories for her, and she went on for 20 minutes,� Ms. Stephen said. “At the end she said, ‘Thanks for listening.’ �

When the guides are off duty their lives outside the Guggenheim often include stops at other museums.

“At the Met or MoMA I’m very aware of other visitors,� said Mr. Tsai, who has been on the job for a year and a half. “I suppose that any job leaks into your daily life.�

For one thing, he finds that his possessive streak travels with him. “When you’re guarding a gallery, you feel like you own the art,� Mr. Tsai said. “It’s like, ‘Stay away from my Picasso.’ When I’m in other museums, I have a sixth sense for security.�

At the Met recently Mr. Tsai noticed with his enhanced peripheral vision that a man was getting too close to a delicate tapestry. He was torn between doing nothing (which he felt was unethical) and intervening (for which he had no authority).

So he did what any good cop would do. “I gave him a real look,� Mr. Tsai said.

But over all, the guides say, the job has given them a heightened sense of empathy for museum patrons, even for those who respond moodily or rudely.

“People are looking at a mute object but bringing all their stuff — their sister’s suicide, their grandparents in Romania — to that moment,� Mr. Fultz said. “If I took any of it personally, I wouldn’t last a week here.�