Bio in three lengths and the digital press kit / EPK

Third-person voice and grammar (and the about-page exception)

• Use your full name on first reference, then surname or pronoun ("Maya Okonkwo … Okonkwo … her").
• Don't start every sentence with the same word; vary structure.
• Keep tense consistent — don't drift between past and present mid-paragraph.
• There is a recognized exception: on a personal website About page, some practitioners combine bio and statement and write the whole thing in first person. The durable rule (per Stanfield) is consistency: if you separate them, keep the bio in third person and the statement in first; if you merge them on an About page, pick one voice and hold it. Don't call something a "statement" if it's in the third person.

Drawn from the recurring elements across Art/Work, Mid-America Arts Alliance, and gallery convention:

• Name + discipline/medium ("a Lisbon-based ceramicist working in…").
• Location (where based; birthplace only if it informs the work).
• A one-line description of the practice — aesthetic, materials, recurring subject matter.
• Training/education (degrees, notable mentors) — or, if self-taught, say so plainly.
• Exhibition history (solo before group; most significant/recent first).
• Awards, grants, residencies.
• Representation (gallery), notable collections/commissions, significant press.
• Current/forthcoming work — end on what's happening now.

Two durable conventions coexist; present both rather than picking one:

• Front-loaded narrative (Stanfield / MAAA): lead with the most engaging, important material; reverse-chronological emphasis (most recent = most important).
• Practice-first, facts-last (the contemporary "mega-gallery" model, per Contemporary Art Issue's survey of David Zwirner, Gagosian, Lisson, et al.): open with medium and a concise description of the practice and subject matter, then recite career facts (born/based, education, representation, key shows) in the closing paragraph(s). Illustrative skeleton: "Born 1984 in [City], [Country], [Artist] studied at [Institution]. She lives and works in [City]. Her work has been exhibited at […] and is held in the collection of […]."

Sources broadly agree on substance over padding:

• Don't apologize or self-deprecate ("although I'm just a student…"). State your stage positively: "a third-year BFA candidate at…" or "an emerging painter building a first body of work."
• Don't inflate — "internationally exhibited" for one group show, or padding with course projects, reads as inexperience to anyone in the field. An honest emerging-artist bio beats a fabricated career.
• Lead with voice, influences, and direction when achievements are thin; the achievements line is the only one you can safely omit.
• Legitimately includable when shows are few: self-organized/open-studio exhibitions, juried open calls, local/community venues, assistantships to other artists, relevant training and workshops, and forthcoming projects. (Don't invent; shape truthfully.)

Common bio pitfalls (inflation, listing everything, jargon, stale)

• Inflation / borrowed authority (name-dropping famous artists, inserting unattributed praise).
• Listing everything — galleries broadly advise capping career facts at roughly five of your strongest items so the reader keeps energy for the work itself; a bio shouldn't exceed one page.
• Jargon.
• Going off-topic — omit marital status, unrelated hobbies, and politics unless directly tied to the work.
• Going stale — a bio two years out of date is a bad look; revisit when you move, change medium, or hit a new milestone.

The durable practice (Stanfield, MAAA, and most arts orgs) is to keep multiple versions on file and name the files clearly (e.g., LastName-Bio-50w.docx, -100w, -250w). Organizations frequently request a specific length and may lightly edit to their house style (Chicago, AP, MLA) — expect this and don't worry about it.

The three tiers are not different bios; they are the same bio compressed. Build the longest version first, then cut.

Contains Name, location, discipline/medium, one-line description of the work, and one anchoring credential (a key award, representation, or signature project). Everything else is cut.

Cut at this tier Education detail, exhibition lists, multiple awards, backstory.

Used in Group-show wall labels, festival/event programs, social-media profiles, podcast/panel intros, contributor notes, conference bios.

Illustrative (≈48 words): "[Artist Name] is a Berlin-based sculptor working in salvaged steel and cast glass. Her work examines industrial decay and repair. A recipient of the [Foundation] Prize, she has exhibited across Germany and the Netherlands and is represented by [Gallery Name]."

Adds to the 50 A fuller description of the practice/themes, education or training, two or three of the strongest career facts (selected exhibitions, a residency, a collection), and a current-work or forthcoming line that's easy to update.

Still cut Comprehensive exhibition lists, minor credits, detailed backstory.

Used in Press releases (many orgs request roughly this length for pitching), gallery and festival websites, shorter grant fields, catalog contributor entries.

Illustrative (≈98 words): "[Artist Name] is a Berlin-based sculptor working in salvaged steel and cast glass, whose work examines cycles of industrial decay, memory, and repair. Born in [City] in 1986, she studied at [Academy] and completed a residency at [Program] in 2021. Her work has been shown at [Venue], [Venue], and the [Museum] group survey [Exhibition Title], and is held in the [Collection]. A recipient of the [Foundation] Prize, she is represented by [Gallery Name]. She is currently developing a series of large-scale outdoor works on post-industrial sites in the Ruhr Valley, opening in 2026."

Highest-leverage insightThird person is a convention with one recognised exception, and holding a single voice across the document matters more than which side of the convention you land on.

The 250-word bio (the full bio) + compression rule

Adds to the 100 A richer account of the practice and its development, more complete (still selected) exhibition history with solo shows distinguished from group, a fuller run of awards/residencies/collections, notable press, and a substantive current/forthcoming paragraph. Typically two to three short paragraphs.

Still not A complete CV (that's the listed document) or a life story.

Used in The artist's own website "About" page, exhibition catalogs, monograph/essay front matter, longer grant and residency applications, the lead bio in a press kit, museum program booklets.

Illustrative structure for the 250 (paragraph plan): 1. Identity + practice: name, location, medium, and a 2–3 sentence description of the work, its materials, and recurring concerns. 2. Trajectory: training, formative residency/award, selected solo then group exhibitions (most significant/recent first), collections, representation, notable press. 3. Current direction: what she is making now and what's forthcoming — the paragraph easiest to update.

Compression rule Moving 250 → 100 → 50, you cut in this order: backstory and process detail → secondary credits and full lists → education detail → all but one anchoring credential. What survives to 50 words is identity + medium + one proof.

Highest-leverage insightThe three lengths are one bio compressed, not three documents — which is why writing the 250 first and cutting it is both faster and more consistent than writing each from scratch.

This section governs how the bio reads, drawing on Gilda Williams's How to Write About Contemporary Art (Thames & Hudson, 2014; Williams is a London correspondent for Artforum and a lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London) for language discipline. Her guidance is about art writing generally; applied to a bio, it means describe the practice plainly and specifically, recite facts cleanly, and resist art-jargon.

• Load the text with solid nouns; be specific. Williams: "Don't dance around art by writing in broad strokes and generic art-patois." A bio line like "explores the relationship between materiality and memory" says little; name the materials and what they do. Concrete nouns, she argues, "produce full mental pictures."
• Avoid "International Art English." The term was coined by Alix Rule and David Levine in their 2012 Triple Canopy essay, which analyzed a corpus of e-flux press releases circulated to a subscriber base of more than ninety thousand art professionals; Williams later popularized the critique. In her 2014 Burnaway interview she calls it "an emergency pseudo-language collectively invented by desperate and inexperienced art writers … attempting a tough job for which they are unprepared" — "unintelligible, meaningless purple art-prose." Red-flag tics: improvised nouns ("visuality"), fashionable terms ("transversal," "platform"), and prefix abuse ("para-, proto-, post-, hyper-"). Worn abstractions to avoid: "subversion," "displacement," "the complexities of life in the digital age."

• Ban "yetis" — hedged, self-contradicting adjective pairs ("familiar yet subversive," "bold yet subtle"). Williams says these reflect "a writer … unable to commit to a single descriptor, hiding behind the ambiguity of art." Commit to a descriptor.

• Don't explain a dense, abstract idea with another dense, abstract idea. Keep the abstract-word count low; ground the reader in concrete description first ("substantiation," in Williams's term, is what separates believable prose from gallery puffery).

• Don't dictate response or borrow authority. Avoid "the viewer feels…", "Like [famous artist], she…", and inserted praise ("her work has been called magical"). Any influence should be "named with razor-sharp precision, and explained."
• For the bio specifically. Williams treats press releases, labels, and short descriptive texts as "explaining" texts that "succeed when facts and ideas are communicated plainly" — the writer is "not asked to speculate excessively on meaning." A bio is an explaining text; let it explain.

Durable principle Read the bio aloud and cut anything inflated. Clarity and specificity read as confidence; jargon and hedging read as insecurity.

Highest-leverage insightSolid nouns and specific claims survive a sceptical reader; hedged adjective pairs and art-jargon signal a writer avoiding anything checkable.

What an EPK is and who uses it

An EPK (electronic press kit) — used interchangeably with "digital press kit" / "media kit" — is a single, organized, downloadable package that gives anyone covering or presenting you everything they need in one place. The audiences are journalists, editors, curators, press officers, arts marketers, festival/venue programmers, and gallerists.

The governing reality: press and arts-marketing staff have very little time per artist. As the arts-marketing resource Arts Hacker puts it: "most arts marketers have anywhere from 5–20 minutes per event for compiling all the related artist information. That includes promo images, bios, and any program specific copy." The entire design goal of an EPK is to remove friction. An EPK that is easy to use gets you covered; one that makes staff hunt, retype, or chase permissions gets corners cut or gets skipped.

Synthesizing Art/Work, arts-council/PR guidance, museum press-office conventions, and the Arts Hacker arts-marketing perspective:

Core (almost always expected)

• Bio in multiple lengths (50 / 100 / 250). Critical format note from arts marketers: supply text as editable .docx or Google Doc, not only PDF. Arts Hacker is blunt: "pdf format is fine but only as a secondary offering. Never (ever!) force arts marketers to use pdf files as a copy/paste resource."
• Artist statement.
• High-resolution images of the work, with caption and credit lines attached (see below). Provide a mix of orientations (landscape, portrait, square) and both print-res and web-res versions. Arts Hacker's concrete print target is a 16:9 landscape "no less than 2450px wide by 1378px high, 300dpi, 100% quality," and it recommends 16:9 as the most versatile source ratio because it crops cleanly to other formats and leaves room for logos/text.
• CV/résumé (the full listed record).
• Contact info — a dedicated email; manager/gallery/publicist if applicable. Make the next step obvious.

Strongly recommended / context-dependent

• Press clippings / reviews / quotes (with source and URL; a dozen at most).
• Headshot / artist portrait (and optionally a studio shot).
• Fact sheet — the bio boiled to scannable bullet points (key facts, themes, notable points of interest) for fast reference.
• Selected works list — a checklist with full caption data for each piece.
• Logos (institution, sponsor, or the artist's own mark) where relevant.
• Social/website links — handles, URLs, and any standard hashtags.

Plurality note Sources genuinely disagree on emphasis. Museum/gallery press kits lead with the exhibition (press release + artwork images + media sheet with credit lines). An individual artist's kit leads with self (bio, statement, portfolio, portrait). Tailor the lead to the context; keep the component list flexible, not fixed.

Image credit & caption (tombstone) conventions and usage terms

This is where artists most often create work — or legal risk — for press. Durable conventions, consistent across museum press offices (MoMA, the Met, Seattle Art Museum) and editorial style guides:

Every image travels with its caption and credit The standard "tombstone" data block for an artwork: Artist, Title (italicized), date, medium, dimensions, credit line — and, where applicable, © copyright holder and photo credit ("Photo: [Name]" or "Photograph provided by [Name]").

Illustrative: "[Artist Name], [Work Title], 2024. Cast glass and salvaged steel, 180 × 90 × 60 cm. Courtesy [Gallery]. © [Artist Name]. Photo: [Photographer]."

• A "media sheet" pairing each supplied image with its exact required caption/credit is the museum-standard device — it makes correct attribution effortless.
• Standard usage terms (mirroring museum press language, e.g. MoMA and the Seattle Art Museum): images are provided to press solely for editorial coverage of the specific exhibition/work; must run with the credit line and copyright as provided; must not be cropped, altered, overprinted, or distorted; other uses require permission.

• For a person photo where rights are uncertain, the safe convention is "Photo courtesy [Name/Studio]," and you should secure the right to distribute press images from your photographer up front (clarify copyright handover when commissioning a portrait).

• Hosting the durable options are (a) a dedicated press page on your website and/or (b) a cloud folder (Google Drive, Dropbox) with clearly labeled subfolders. A web page is easiest to keep current and findable; a PDF one-sheet is fine as a secondary offering.

• Don't rely on email attachments — kits exceed mail size limits, and large attachments get ignored. Share a link.
• Folder structure: group by type — e.g., /Bios, /Images (HD), /Images (web), /Statement, /CV, /Press, /Photo-credits — and label HD vs. web clearly. A short README naming what's inside and who to contact reduces back-and-forth.
• File naming: use human-readable names with the artist's name (OkonkwoMaya_Untitled_2024_300dpi.jpg), not random alphanumeric strings; avoid special characters. Embedding the date or photo credit in the filename is a useful extra.
• Permissions: set cloud-share settings to view/download only — never allow outside editing or deletion. Password-protect anything embargoed or unreleased.
• Currency: an EPK must be up to date — old shows, stale photos, and outdated stats undercut you. Review every few months and on any major news.

Highest-leverage insightPress have minutes per artist, so a kit's job is to remove every step between interest and publication — anything a writer has to request is a step where coverage dies.

Text (editable .docx / Google Doc)

• [ ] Bio — 50, 100, and 250-word versions, clearly named
• [ ] Artist statement
• [ ] Fact sheet (scannable bullets)
• [ ] CV/résumé (full listed record)
• [ ] Selected works list with full tombstone data per piece
• [ ] Press quotes/clippings with source + URL
• [ ] Photo-credit sheet (each image → its exact caption + credit + © + usage line)

Images (with captions/credits attached)

• [ ] 6–10 high-res work images (≈300 dpi / 2450px+ wide) + web versions
• [ ] Multiple orientations (landscape / portrait / square)
• [ ] Artist headshot/portrait (+ optional studio shot)
• [ ] Logos where relevant
• [ ] Usage terms stated (editorial use; credit required; no cropping/alteration)

Contact & links

• [ ] Dedicated press email; manager/gallery/publicist if any
• [ ] Website + social handles + any standard hashtags

Packaging

• [ ] Hosted on a press page and/or labeled cloud folder
• [ ] Folder subdivided by type, HD vs. web labeled, README included
• [ ] Human-readable filenames
• [ ] Share settings = view/download only; embargoed files protected
• [ ] Dated/version-checked within the last few months

Highest-leverage insightA kit is only as usable as its worst missing file, and that gap is always discovered by the person you most wanted to impress.

Stage 1 — Build the spine (any career stage) Write the 250-word full bio first, in third person, plainly worded. Cut it to 100, then to 50. Save all three as named editable files. This alone covers most requests.

Stage 2 — Separate the documents Confirm your bio (about you), statement (about the work), and any project description (about one project) are not bleeding into each other. Keep the CV current as the data source the bio draws from.

Stage 3 — Assemble the EPK Use the press-kit checklist above. Prioritize, in order: editable bio text → captioned/credited images → contact info. These are the three things press need most and most often lack.

Stage 4 — Host and maintain Put it on a press page and/or a clean cloud folder with a README. Review quarterly and after any milestone.

Benchmarks that change the plan

• Thin CV / no press yet → lead bios with voice and direction, not credentials; in the EPK, foreground statement, portfolio images, and a strong portrait rather than a sparse press section.
• Gained gallery representation → shift toward the practice-first/facts-last bio model; add representation and collections; let the gallery's preferred length lead.
• Active exhibition season / a publicist on the team → expand press clippings, keep the fact sheet and forthcoming-work lines fresh, and make sure image usage terms are airtight.

• Going international / institutional shows → tighten caption/credit/copyright discipline and supply higher-volume, multi-format image sets.

• Guidance is plural, not prescriptive Sources genuinely differ on voice (third-person-only vs. first-person About pages), on how much exhibition history to include (front-loaded narrative vs. facts-last gallery model), and on EPK emphasis (self-led vs. exhibition-led). This guide presents the range deliberately; choose per context. There is no single "best."

• Word-count bands are conventions, not laws. "50/100/250" are working targets; real requests vary (1–3 sentences, 150, 300, one page). Build modularly so you can hit any ask.
• House styles override yours. Presenting organizations will edit to their style guide (Chicago/AP/MLA) — expect light changes to punctuation and capitalization.
• Image rights are the real legal exposure. Caption/credit/copyright conventions here reflect editorial and museum norms; specific rights (especially for photographers' images and works held in collections) must be cleared by the artist. When in doubt, confirm permissions before distributing.
• This guide is deliberately durable. It omits time-sensitive specifics — current platform UIs, prices, submission deadlines, and named tools' feature sets — which change and should be checked live when you act.

Highest-leverage insightBuild the 250-word bio once and everything downstream — the 100, the 50, the kit — is derived from it rather than argued again.