Responding to The 2022 Revised National Curriculum’s emphasis on expanding school- and teacher-level autonomy in Korea, this paper reconceptualizes teacher autonomy in art education as an ontological and interpretive practice. Teacher autonomy is redefined as a hermeneutic practice, encompassing a dialogic reading of curriculum (Gadamer), a temporal cycle of reflective reconstruction (Pinar), and an aesthetic approach to professional judgment (Eisner). These perspectives position autonomy in art education as an interpretive capacity that informs curricular choices, critique, and assessment. The paper proposes “hermeneutic design” and an expanded “interpretive space” as guiding principles for art curriculum development. As a concrete model, the Teacher Design Team (TDT) is presented as a means for the collective enactment of hermeneutic autonomy, characterized by four interrelated features: horizontal co-design (fusion of interpretations), reflective dialogue (hermeneutic circularity), context-attentive planning (attention to time and place), and iterative revision (incorporation of past, present, and future). This study provides a theoretical foundation linking interpretation and artistic judgment, arguing that teacher autonomy in art education is realized through cyclical practices of understanding, reflection, interpretation, and reconstruction within classroom communities. It further outlines directions for narrative and design-based research on hermeneutic autonomy in teacher education.