You have the work hung, the lighting set, the opening date confirmed. Now someone needs to write the exhibition text. The catalog essay. The wall labels. Maybe a press release. You need an art writer, and you need one fast.
This is the moment where many galleries, curators, and artists make expensive mistakes. They hire the wrong person, get text that doesn't work, and either live with it or scramble to fix it days before the opening. I've been on both sides of this: as the writer being hired, and as the editor cleaning up after someone else. Here's what I've learned about getting it right.
Art Writer, Copywriter, Journalist: They Are Not the Same
The first mistake is treating "writer" as a single category. A copywriter who writes brilliant ad campaigns may have no idea how to contextualize a painting within post-war abstraction. A journalist who covers the art world may write sharp, engaging prose but struggle with the formal tone a catalog demands. An academic art historian may produce rigorous scholarship that puts your visitors to sleep.
What you need depends on what you're producing.
For a gallery catalog text, you need someone with art historical training who can also write for a non-academic audience. For auction catalog entries, you need someone who understands both connoisseurship and commercial writing. For wall labels and press materials, you need clarity and precision above all. Few writers do all of these well. Know which one you need before you start looking.
What to Look for in a Portfolio
Published catalog texts. Not blog posts about art. Not reviews. Actual catalog essays written for galleries, museums, or auction houses. This is the single best indicator that a writer understands the form. Ask for two or three examples and read them carefully. Do they make you want to see the artwork? Do they balance scholarship with readability? If the writing feels like it was written to impress other writers rather than to serve the art, keep looking.
Range of artists and periods. A writer who has only ever written about emerging contemporary art may struggle with Old Masters, and vice versa. If your exhibition crosses periods or media, you need someone comfortable moving between different art historical vocabularies.
Familiarity with attribution language. If the exhibition involves historical works, your writer needs to understand the precise terminology: "attributed to," "studio of," "circle of," "manner of." Using the wrong term is not just sloppy. It can be legally and commercially dangerous.
The Conversation Before the Contract
Before you hire anyone, have a real conversation. Not an email exchange. A call or a meeting. You need to know three things:
Do they ask questions about the art? A good art writer will want to know about the artist's practice, the curatorial concept, the intended audience, the context of the exhibition. If they only ask about deadlines and word counts, they're approaching it as a production job, not a creative one.
Do they push back? The best writers will tell you when your curatorial statement is unclear, when the press release buries the lead, when the catalog structure doesn't serve the work. If a writer agrees with everything you say in the first meeting, they will probably produce text that is correct but lifeless. You want someone with opinions.
Have they seen art in person recently? This sounds like a strange question. It is not. Writing about art requires a relationship with looking. A writer who spends time in galleries and museums writes differently from one who works only from images and press kits. You can feel the difference in the text.
Red Flags
"I can write about anything." Maybe. But art writing is a specialization. A generalist who claims to cover all topics equally well usually covers none of them deeply. Specialists charge more and are worth it.
No art history background. A good art writer does not need a PhD. But they need to have studied art history formally or spent enough years in the field to have equivalent knowledge. Without it, the writing will lack the contextual depth that separates professional exhibition text from enthusiastic description.
They send a quote without seeing the work. A writer who quotes a fixed price before understanding the scope of the project is either overcharging or underdelivering. The fee should reflect the complexity of the work: how many artists, what period, how much research is needed, how many deliverables. A serious writer will ask these questions before naming a number.
Timing and What It Costs You
The biggest mistake galleries make is hiring the writer last. The text is treated as something that can be bolted on a week before the opening. It cannot. Good exhibition writing requires time to research, time to look at the work (ideally in person), time to draft, and time to revise. For a catalog essay, four to six weeks is reasonable. For wall labels and shorter texts, two to three weeks.
Rush jobs cost more and produce worse results. If you're planning an exhibition, bring the writer in early. The best exhibition texts are written by people who were part of the process, not people who arrived at the end of it.
If you have an exhibition coming up and need writing that does the work justice, let's talk about it. I've written for galleries across Europe and I'm always interested in new projects.