1.2 Inquiry-Guided Investigation

2026-27 AP Art and Design AI Policy

AI tools are optional. If you use them, use them ethically, responsibly, and intentionally, and keep every finished portfolio piece your own work.

• Generative AI may support research, ideation, practice, experimentation, and revision. Do not use generative AI, including generative features such as object creation, generative fill or expand, and background replacement, to create final submitted artwork.
• Non-generative AI editing may be used at any stage to faithfully represent artwork you made. Permitted examples include exposure, contrast, color correction, cropping, selection, and minor cleanup.
• Disclose every use of generative or non-generative AI in the AP Digital Portfolio for both Sustained Investigation and Selected Works.

See College Board's 2026-27 AI guidance for the complete policy.

1.2 Inquiry-Guided Investigation

Inquiry-guided investigation means building a sustained investigation around questions that are specific enough to test, revise, and document. In AP Art and Design, inquiry is not just a theme statement. It is the thinking process that connects your choices about materials, processes, ideas, and viewer response.

A sustained investigation is an inquiry-based, in-depth study of materials, processes, and ideas developed over time. As artists and designers investigate, they expand their awareness of possibilities for making. Their questions may focus on art and design choices directly, but they can also extend beyond the discipline to history, science, community experience, technology, culture, or other fields that inform the work.

A strong inquiry usually starts with an open-ended question: How can repeated forms show memory? How might scale change the feeling of a familiar object? How can a material associated with one place or tradition communicate a different context? The question gives your work direction, but it should still leave room for discovery. Inquiry questions can be broad or simple. They may ask who, what, when, where, why, how, what if, or why not. Even basic questions can open an in-depth investigation when they are pursued through materials, processes, ideas, and revision over time.

Researching Inquiry in Art, Design, and Other Disciplines

Research supports inquiry-guided investigation. Study how artists and designers show evidence of questioning, experimentation, revision, and discovery in their work. This can be indirect research, such as analyzing a photographer's contact sheets or a designer's iterations to see how inquiry shaped decisions. It can also be direct research, such as interviewing a scientist, writer, engineer, activist, or other practitioner about the questions they ask and how they investigate them. Researching both art/design and other disciplines can expand your own ways of asking questions and developing work.

What to Document

Documentation should show how your investigation develops over time. Keep records of:

• the questions that guide your choices
• materials and processes you tried
• revisions that changed the work
• visual evidence from sketches, tests, models, or drafts
• written reflection about what worked, what changed, and why

Documentation is not just proof that you did the work. It becomes a resource for the artist or designer because it preserves questions, discoveries, dead ends, feedback, and next steps that can guide later decisions. Documentation can also be shared with viewers. In some cases, sketches, process images, notes, tests, or collected evidence may be presented as a work itself and/or included as part of the sustained investigation.

The CED expects inquiry to be visible through investigation and practice. That means your portfolio should show evidence of decisions, not just finished pieces.

Turning Questions Into Work

Start with one question and make several small tests. Change one variable at a time, such as material, surface, scale, lighting, placement, or point of view. Then compare the results. This helps you explain how your choices affect meaning.

For example, an investigation about public and private identity might test transparent material, layered text, self-portrait fragments, and installation in different spaces. Each test gives you evidence for the next decision.

Investigation is broader than making tests. It includes research, perception, curiosity, examination, discovery, imagination, interpretation, description, and conversation. Through looking, reading, discussing, experimenting, and reflecting, artists and designers may confirm an idea, challenge an assumption, or discover unexpected connections and opportunities. These moments should be documented because they show how inquiry shapes the sustained investigation.

Documenting Viewers' Interpretations

Inquiry-guided investigation also includes documenting how viewers interpret your work. Record what different viewers notice, misunderstand, connect to, or feel when they encounter the piece. You can gather this through critiques, conversations, written feedback, observation of audience reactions, or asking follow-up questions such as:

• What do you think this work is about?
• Which visual choices led you to that interpretation?
• How did scale, material, color, image, or placement affect your response?

Documenting viewers' interpretations helps you see whether your decisions communicate as intended and can lead to new questions, revisions, and directions in the sustained investigation.

AP Portfolio Connection

In the Sustained Investigation section, readers look for evidence that your work grows from inquiry. Use process images and writing to show how questions led to experimentation, how experimentation led to revision, and how revision made the work more intentional.