- A gallery press kit serves journalists, fair committees, and collectors with different needs.
- Always include captioned high-res images, short artist bios, and a current press release.
- Update after every exhibition, not once a year.
In 2024, Voloshyn Gallery participated in nine international art fairs. SCOPE Miami Beach, VOLTA New York, Dallas Art Fair, NADA, Untitled. Nine fairs means nine submission packages, nine sets of press materials tailored to different committees, different cities, different audiences. When I profiled the gallery for YellowBlue, what struck me was not the number of fairs but how prepared they were. Every image captioned. Every bio current. Every press release adapted to context. That level of readiness does not happen by accident. It happens because they have a press kit that works.
Most galleries do not. Most galleries have a folder somewhere with unlabeled JPEGs, a bio that hasn't been updated since 2021, and a press release from two exhibitions ago. When a journalist or a fair committee asks for materials, the scramble begins. It does not have to be this way.
What a Gallery Press Kit Is For
A gallery press kit is not the same as an artist press kit. An artist press kit represents one person. A gallery press kit represents a program: your roster, your exhibitions, your vision as an institution. It is a document that answers, in one package, three different questions from three different audiences.
Journalists want a story they can write in two hours. Fair committees want evidence that you are a professional operation. Collectors want enough information to decide whether they should visit your booth or your next opening. The same press kit serves all three, but each audience reads different parts of it.
What Goes In It
Gallery overview. One paragraph. Who you are, where you are based, how long you have been operating, what your program focuses on. This is not the place for your founding philosophy or a history of the building. One paragraph that a journalist can drop directly into an article.
Current exhibition press release. Not a curatorial statement. Not a catalog essay. A press release: who, what, where, when, and one good quote. If you do not have a current press release, write one before building the rest of the kit.
Artist bios. Short. 100 to 150 words each, written in third person. Education, key exhibitions, collections, awards. No philosophical statements. Include bios for every artist in the current show, plus your represented roster.
High-resolution images with full captions. This is where most galleries fail. Every image needs: artist name, work title, year, medium, dimensions, and photo credit. No exceptions. A journalist will not use an image they cannot caption, and they will not email you to ask for details they should already have.
Exhibition checklist. A list of every work in the show: artist, title, date, medium, dimensions. Price list goes on a separate document, shared only with collectors and not included in press materials.
Press contact. A name, not just info@gallery.com. Journalists want to know who to call. Give them a direct email and a phone number.
That is the minimum. What separates a strong kit from a forgettable one:
Gallery fact sheet. One page. Founding year, total exhibitions to date, notable fair history, collections that hold work you have sold. Numbers give you credibility. When I interviewed gallerists Yuliia and Maksym Voloshyn, they described how galleries now operate "almost like museums" with programs planned years in advance. A fact sheet proves that you do too.
Previous press coverage. Links or PDFs of published articles about your gallery or exhibitions. Even a local newspaper review helps.
Installation views. Photographs of past exhibitions installed in your space. They show a fair committee what your presentation standards look like, and they give journalists a visual they can use even if they have never visited.
How to Organize It
Use a shared folder. Google Drive or Dropbox. Do not send a 200MB zip file by email. Send a one-page pitch with a link to the full kit.
Name your files like a professional. Deyak_Untitled_2024_300dpi.jpg tells a journalist everything. IMG_4832.jpg tells them nothing. Same for documents: Voloshyn_PressRelease_May2026.pdf, not final_FINAL_v3.pdf.
Keep the folder structure simple. One subfolder for press release and texts, one for artist bios, one for images, one for installation views. Include press release and bios as both PDF (for reading) and Word or Google Doc (for journalists who need to copy text).
Keep the total size manageable. The folder a journalist downloads should be under 50MB. Link to a separate high-resolution image library for anyone who needs print-quality files.
Update after every exhibition. Not once a year. Not before a fair. After every show. If your press kit still features an exhibition from six months ago, it signals that nothing is happening. A gallery that looks inactive does not get press, does not get into fairs, and does not attract collectors.
What People Actually Look For
Journalists want three things: one good quote, one good image, one clear angle. They do not read ten-page catalogs. They scan the press release, pick the most interesting sentence, download the best image, and write the piece. Make those three things easy to find and your coverage doubles.
Fair committees want proof. Proof that you are a real gallery with an active program, professional presentation standards, and a clear artistic direction. The Voloshyns told me that prestigious fairs employ "strict selection." Committees look at the quality of your materials as much as the art itself. A sloppy submission package suggests a sloppy booth.
Collectors want discretion and information in that order. They want to see the work, understand the artist's track record, and know who to contact. They do not want to feel like they are reading marketing material. Keep the tone professional, not promotional.
Mistakes That Make Galleries Look Amateur
Images without captions. The single most common problem. A beautiful photograph of an artwork is useless to a journalist without the artist's name, the title, the year, and the medium. It takes five minutes to add this information. Not adding it costs you coverage.
A bio that reads like a CV dump. "Born 1985, Kyiv. MFA National Academy. Solo exhibitions: 2019 Gallery X, 2020 Gallery Y, 2021 Gallery Z, 2022 Gallery W..." That is a list, not a bio. Write it in prose. Make it human.
No press release. Just a flyer with the exhibition poster and the opening hours. A flyer is not press material. A press release gives a journalist something to write about. A flyer gives them something to recycle.
Materials in only one language. If you show at international fairs, your press kit needs to be in English at minimum. Spanish if you show at ARCO Madrid. Not having translated materials tells a fair committee that you are not serious about their market.
Sending the full kit unsolicited. Nobody wants a 150MB folder landing in their inbox unannounced. Send a one-paragraph pitch with one image and a download link. Let them choose what to access. Respect their inbox and they are more likely to open the folder.
Building a press kit is not glamorous work. But it is the kind of work that compounds. A gallery with a clean, current, well-organized press kit is a gallery that gets covered, gets accepted to fairs, and gets the kind of collector attention that turns into sales. If you need help building or writing yours, let's talk. I write exhibition texts, press releases, and gallery materials for institutions at every scale.