The article provides a practical guide to documenting contemporary art exhibitions, outlining methods for creating useful, ethical, and durable records. It emphasizes the importance of shot lists, consistent file naming, descriptive metadata, and accessibility features like captions and transcripts to ensure archives remain searchable and meaningful over time.
Effective documentation is crucial as it shapes the historical narrative of an exhibition, especially for ephemeral works like performance or installation, where the record may be the only remaining trace. It serves diverse stakeholders—artists, curators, conservators, and future audiences—by preserving artistic intent, supporting research, and enabling broader engagement with the work beyond its physical and temporal limits.