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Exhibition Opening

Art Exhibition Press Release Template

The default for any new show at a gallery or institution. Use it when the exhibition itself is the news. If the artist joining your roster is the story, use the artist announcement instead, and if you are inviting press to a preview rather than announcing the show, use the private view.

The example

Luminous Threads: Maria Alvarez

New weavings and works on paper tracing the textile economies of the Rio Grande valley

Galería Méndez is pleased to present "Luminous Threads," an exhibition of new weavings and works on paper by Maria Alvarez, and the artist's first solo presentation with the gallery.

The exhibition centres on a series of nine large-scale weavings, each worked in hand-dyed cotton and salvaged industrial thread. Alvarez sources her materials from the remnants of textile mills along the Rio Grande valley, and the resulting surfaces carry the residue of that industry: bobbin marks, machine-cut selvedges, the particular fade of a dye lot that was never meant to last.

Where the weavings accumulate, the works on paper subtract. A parallel series of graphite drawings records the same loom patterns at one-to-one scale, pressed through the paper until the fibres begin to give. Shown together, the two bodies of work hold a single question in tension: what a textile remembers, and what it is asked to forget.

Alvarez's practice has consistently foregrounded labour as material rather than subject. Her weavings do not depict the mills; they are made of them. That distinction places the work closer to the archive than to the landscape tradition its palette might otherwise suggest.

The exhibition is accompanied by a booklet with a new essay by the writer Inés Cardoso, published by the gallery in an edition of 500.

Maria Alvarez (b. 1987, El Paso) lives and works in Marfa, Texas. Her work has been shown at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and the Blanton Museum of Art, and is held in the collections of the Ruby City Foundation and the McNay Art Museum.

Exhibition dates: 15 March to 28 June 2026

Opening reception: Saturday 15 March, 6 to 8pm

Gallery hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm

Galería Méndez, 14 Calle Mayor, Madrid

Press enquiries and images: press@galeriamendez.example

Every artist, gallery and institution in this example is invented.

Why it works

The second paragraph does the work

The first paragraph is administrative: who, what, where. An editor reads it to file the story. The second is where they decide whether to keep reading, so it carries the most specific material fact available. "Salvaged industrial thread" and "bobbin marks" are things a writer can use. "Explores themes of memory" is not.

Make the claim, then earn it

The fourth paragraph makes an argument: the work is archival rather than pictorial. It is allowed to make that argument because the preceding paragraphs supplied the evidence. A release that opens with the argument and never supplies the evidence reads as a brochure.

Biography goes last and stays short

Collections and institutions establish that the artist is worth covering. They are not the story. Three sentences is enough, and it belongs after the work has been described, not before.

Facts sit in a block, not in prose

Dates, hours and address are what a listings editor copies. Burying them in a paragraph makes them harder to extract and increases the chance they are transcribed wrongly.

Conventions
  • Lead with the gallery and the artist, not with an adjective.
  • Name the medium and the scale early. "Nine large-scale weavings" tells a picture editor whether the show is photographable.
  • Give the exhibition title in quotation marks on first use, then drop them.
  • Use the artist's surname after the first full mention, as a publication would.
  • Include birth year and where the artist lives and works. Critics use both.
  • Say what accompanies the show: a catalogue, an essay, a public programme.
What gets it deleted
  • Opening with "We are thrilled to announce". The excitement is yours, not the reader's.
  • Describing the work only in terms of what it explores or interrogates, with no account of what it physically is.
  • Stacking every institution the artist has shown at into the first paragraph.
  • Omitting the dates, or giving an opening date with no closing date.
  • Sending without images or a note saying images are available on request.
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