In 2018, while editing ART UKRAINE, I received roughly 30 press releases a week from galleries across Kyiv and beyond. I read every one. Most took less than ten seconds to discard. Not because the exhibitions were bad, but because the releases gave me no reason to keep reading.
The subject line would say something like "New Exhibition at Gallery X." The first paragraph would announce that the gallery was "pleased to present" a show. The second would list the artist's degrees and previous exhibitions. Somewhere in the third paragraph, buried under institutional language, there might be a sentence about what the work actually looked like or why anyone should care. By then, I had already moved on.
After years on the receiving end, and years writing releases myself, I can tell you exactly where most galleries lose the journalist's attention and how to keep it.
The Subject Line Decides Everything
A journalist's inbox holds dozens of press releases on any given day. Your subject line competes with all of them. "New Exhibition Opening at Gallery X" communicates nothing. "Exhibition of Paintings" communicates even less.
The subject line needs to contain one specific, interesting fact. "Painter's first show in 12 years opens in Barcelona." "Gallery presents 30 works recovered from a Kyiv basement during occupation." "Solo exhibition explores the 400-year history of a single pigment." Each of these creates a question the reader wants answered. That question is what gets your email opened.
If you cannot write an interesting subject line, you may not yet understand what makes your exhibition interesting. That is a curatorial problem, not a writing problem.
The First Paragraph Is the Whole Story
Journalists trained in news writing call this the inverted pyramid: the most important information comes first, and everything after is supporting detail. Art press releases do the opposite. They build up slowly, save the interesting parts for the end, and assume the reader will stay for the journey. The reader will not stay.
Your first paragraph needs to answer: What is this exhibition? Who is the artist? Where and when? And most importantly, what makes it worth covering? Not "worth seeing." Worth covering. Those are different things. A beautiful show with no angle is hard to write about. A show with a story, a controversy, a first, a return, a connection to something happening in the world right now: that is what gets press.
What Press Releases Get Wrong About Artist Bios
The standard approach is to list every exhibition, degree, and residency the artist has ever had. This turns the middle section of your press release into a CV. Journalists do not need a CV. They need context.
Instead of listing credentials, pick the two or three facts about the artist that are most relevant to this exhibition. If the show is about displacement, mention that the artist left their studio during the war. If the show uses an unusual material, explain how the artist came to work with it. Everything else belongs in the appendix, not the body.
When I profiled Voloshyn Gallery for YellowBlue, the story was not about their exhibition history. It was about two gallerists who opened a show in Miami on February 5, 2022, planned to fly home to Kyiv, and 17 days later watched Russia invade their country. That single detail told the reader everything about who they were and why their work mattered. Your press release needs that kind of detail.
The Practical Section Nobody Includes
At the bottom of every press release, after the essay, there should be a block of practical information formatted for easy copying:
Exhibition title (in the original language and in English if different). Artist name(s) with dates and nationality. Venue with full address. Dates including opening reception. Hours. Admission (free or ticketed). Press contact with name, email, and phone. High-resolution images available for download, with proper attribution information for each.
This sounds obvious. You would be surprised how many releases arrive without a press contact, without image credits, or with dates formatted so ambiguously that a journalist in another time zone cannot figure out when the show opens. Every missing detail is a reason for the journalist to cover someone else's show instead.
The Difference Between Description and Argument
The weakest press releases describe what the exhibition contains. "The show features 25 paintings in oil and acrylic, exploring themes of memory and identity." This is a description. It tells me what is in the room. It does not tell me why it matters.
The strongest press releases make an argument. "Over three years, the artist painted the same view from her studio window 300 times, documenting not the landscape but the way her own perception of it changed after her diagnosis." That is not a description. It is a reason to pay attention.
When I reviewed exhibitions for ART UKRAINE, the ones I wrote about at length were never the ones with the best descriptions. They were the ones where somebody, either the curator or the artist or the press writer, had figured out why this show existed right now and told me in the first three sentences.
Format and Length
One page. Maximum two. A press release is not a catalog essay. It is an invitation to look closer, not a substitute for the looking.
Use short paragraphs. Leave white space. Bold the exhibition title, the artist name, and the dates. Attach two or three high-resolution images with captions and credits. Send as a PDF and in the body of the email (not just as an attachment, because some journalists will not open attachments from unknown senders).
If you have an exhibition coming up and want a press release that gets read, I can help. After 100+ published articles and years as an editor deciding which shows to cover, I know what makes a journalist stop scrolling.