Gallery Press Kit Checklist: What to Include Before Your Show

In 2024, Voloshyn Gallery participated in nine international art fairs, among them SCOPE Miami Beach, VOLTA New York, Dallas Art Fair, NADA, and Untitled, and nine fairs means nine submission packages, nine sets of press materials tailored to different committees, different cities, and different audiences. When I profiled the gallery for YellowBlue, what struck me was not the number of fairs but how prepared they were, with every image captioned, every bio current, and every press release adapted to its context. That level of readiness does not happen by accident, it happens because they have a press kit that actually works.

Most galleries do not, and instead they have a folder somewhere with unlabeled JPEGs, a bio that hasn't been updated since 2021, and a press release from two exhibitions ago, so 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, because where an artist press kit represents one person, a gallery press kit represents a program built from your roster, your exhibitions, and your vision as an institution. It is a single document that answers, in one package, three different questions coming 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. Keep it to one paragraph that says who you are, where you are based, how long you have been operating, and what your program focuses on, because this is not the place for your founding philosophy or a history of the building. Write the single paragraph a journalist can drop directly into an article without editing it.

Current exhibition press release. This is not a curatorial statement or a catalog essay, it is a press release that covers who, what, where, when, and one good quote. If you do not have a current press release, write one before you build the rest of the kit.

Artist bios. Keep them short, 100 to 150 words each and written in third person, covering education, key exhibitions, collections, and awards without drifting into philosophical statements. Include a bio for every artist in the current show, plus your represented roster.

High-resolution images with full captions. This is where most galleries fail, because every image needs the artist name, work title, year, medium, dimensions, and photo credit with 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. This is a list of every work in the show, with artist, title, date, medium, and dimensions, while the price list goes on a separate document shared only with collectors and never included in the press materials themselves.

Press contact. Give a name rather than just info@gallery.com, because journalists want to know who to call, so hand them a direct email and a phone number.

That is the minimum, and here is what separates a strong kit from a forgettable one.

Gallery fact sheet. Keep it to one page covering founding year, total exhibitions to date, notable fair history, and the collections that hold work you have sold, because the 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, and a fact sheet proves that you do too.

Previous press coverage. Gather links or PDFs of published articles about your gallery or exhibitions, since even a local newspaper review helps build the case that other people have already taken you seriously.

Installation views. Include photographs of past exhibitions installed in your space, because 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 set foot in the gallery.

How to Organize It

Use a shared folder on Google Drive or Dropbox rather than sending a 200MB zip file by email, and lead with a one-page pitch that links to the full kit instead of dumping everything at once. The point is to let the reader reach the materials on their own terms.

Name your files like a professional, because Deyak_Untitled_2024_300dpi.jpg tells a journalist everything while IMG_4832.jpg tells them nothing, and the same logic applies to documents, where Voloshyn_PressRelease_May2026.pdf reads as serious and final_FINAL_v3.pdf reads as a mess.

Keep the folder structure simple, with one subfolder for the press release and texts, one for artist bios, one for images, and one for installation views, and include the press release and bios as both PDF for reading and Word or Google Doc for journalists who need to copy the text directly.

Keep the total size manageable so the folder a journalist downloads stays under 50MB, and link out to a separate high-resolution image library for anyone who actually needs print-quality files.

Update after every exhibition rather than once a year or only before a fair, because if your press kit still features an exhibition from six months ago, it signals that nothing is happening at the gallery. 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, and one clear angle, and 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, so make those three things easy to find and your coverage roughly doubles.

Fair committees want 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," and committees look at the quality of your materials as much as the art itself, so a sloppy submission package quietly suggests a sloppy booth.

Collectors want discretion and information, in that order, because they want to see the work, understand the artist's track record, and know who to contact without feeling like they are reading marketing material. Keep the tone professional, not promotional.

Mistakes That Make Galleries Look Amateur

Images without captions. This is the single most common problem, because 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 the information, and not adding it quietly costs you coverage.

A bio that reads like a CV dump. Something like "Born 1985, Kyiv. MFA National Academy. Solo exhibitions: 2019 Gallery X, 2020 Gallery Y, 2021 Gallery Z, 2022 Gallery W..." is a list rather than a bio, so write it in prose and make it read like a human being instead of a spreadsheet.

No press release. When all you send is a flyer with the exhibition poster and the opening hours, you have sent something that is not press material at all, because a press release gives a journalist something to write about while 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, and in Spanish too if you show at ARCO Madrid, because 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, so send a one-paragraph pitch with one image and a download link and let them choose what to open. Respect their inbox and they are far more likely to open the folder.

Building a press kit is not glamorous work, but it is the kind of work that compounds, because a gallery with a clean, current, well-organized kit is a gallery that gets covered, gets accepted to fairs, and earns the kind of collector attention that turns into sales. If you need help building or writing yours, see my gallery writing services, where I write exhibition texts, press releases, and gallery materials for institutions at every scale.