Exhibition reporting and fact-check checklist

What to take away

• Check the exhibition version you visited, not only its opening-day description.
• Verify displayed object data and preserve qualified attribution language.
• Connect every institutional claim, quotation, and judgment to its proper source.
• Test practical and interpretive access without making venue-wide promises.
• Prepare correction and update notes before a changed display creates confusion.

Use this checklist after reporting and before publication. It is designed for reviews, news stories, profiles, and reported analysis. Not every item belongs in every article, but every applicable item should have a recorded answer. "Checked" means confirmed against a suitable source, not copied from a second press release.

Assignment and visit record

• Identify the story as a review, report, preview, profile, interview, or analysis.
• Record the official exhibition title, venue, organizer, and credited curators.
• Check public dates, preview dates, closures, extensions, and timed-entry terms.
• Record the writer's visit date and approximate time.
• List rooms, works, screens, or programs that were unavailable.
• State whether the installation was complete when observed.
• Distinguish firsthand observation from supplied images or virtual access.

The National Museum of Asian Art publishes full accessible text for a specific exhibition, including wall and case labels in a format intended for screen readers and text resizing. When such a resource exists, compare it with what was displayed during the visit. Note the version and access date because online and in-gallery text may change at different times.

Names, roles, and quotations

• Confirm names, honorifics, pronouns, and role descriptions.
• Distinguish artist, curator, organizer, designer, commissioner, lender, collector, and sponsor.
• Match every quotation to a recording, transcript, contemporaneous notes, or an identified written source.
• Preserve material qualifications and do not fuse comments from separate moments.
• Confirm translations with a qualified source and identify who supplied them.
• Give a subject time to answer a consequential allegation.
• Explain when a spokesperson declined, did not answer, or could not be reached.

Object and collection facts

• Check maker or culture, displayed title, date, medium, dimensions, and accession number.
• Preserve terms such as "attributed to," "workshop of," "possibly," and "formerly attributed to."
• Verify whether the work is owned, promised, borrowed, on deposit, or reproduced.
• Check lender credit and whether anonymity is requested or required.
• Compare the wall label, collection record, catalog, and current institutional response when they differ.
• Do not turn a gap in provenance into a continuous ownership history.
• Attribute disputed dates, identities, ownership, authenticity, and interpretation.

Exhibition argument and context

• Quote the curatorial premise accurately and in proportion.
• Identify which objects, sections, or design choices support the premise.
• Seek evidence for historic firsts, rediscoveries, influence, scale, and audience claims.
• Separate marketing language from editorial description.
• Look for relevant missing periods, voices, regions, media, or counterexamples.
• Avoid presenting absence as intentional unless someone responsible confirms it.
• State the criterion behind each strong judgment.

Space, design, and visitor conditions

• Check room order, thresholds, cases, mounts, sight lines, light, sound, and seating.
• Identify whether crowding or a technical failure was temporary.
• Record label legibility, glare, reading height, and distance.
• Test captioning, transcripts, audio description, tactile options, or digital controls that the story evaluates.
• Identify any feature you did not test.
• Avoid declaring the whole museum accessible from one route or gallery.

The National Portrait Gallery's large-print exhibition label page lists downloadable label-text documents for current displays. A prepublication check should verify that a referenced alternative format matches the exhibition and remains available. Describe where readers can find it only if that practical detail has been checked near publication.

Images, recordings, and documents

• Confirm that every image depicts the stated object, room, date, or event.
• Record creator, source page, license or permission, caption facts, and modifications.
• Distinguish permission to take a photograph from permission to publish it.
• Verify that supplied installation views show the version discussed.
• Check document dates, authors, completeness, and later revisions.
• Keep screenshots or archived copies when a changeable page supports a consequential claim.
• Do not expose private data contained in loan, donor, or visitor records.

Money, relationships, and independence

• Confirm ticket prices, funding figures, sponsorships, grants, and acquisition amounts.
• Identify the period and currency for every financial figure.
• Disclose relevant complimentary access, travel, accommodation, meals, or gifts.
• Check whether the writer or publication has a personal, professional, collecting, or commercial relationship with the subject.
• Explain anonymous sourcing and obtain editorial approval where required.
• Do not trade favorable wording for future access.

Final copy and update plan

• Put the visit date beside observations that could change.
• Use "the label states" for a displayed claim and "the exhibition suggests" for analysis.
• Remove claims that lack adequate evidence or qualify them honestly.
• Check headline, deck, caption, metadata, and social copy against the article.
• Prepare a contact path for corrections.
• Decide how object withdrawals, label changes, extensions, closures, and corrected records will be noted.

Common questions

Should every object fact be checked twice?

Check consequential facts against the strongest available record. A second independent source is useful when records conflict or a claim is disputed.

Is a wall label a reliable source?

It is authoritative evidence of what the exhibition tells visitors. It may not settle a contested historical or ownership claim.

Must a review list every unavailable work?

No. Identify absences that materially affect the exhibition or the review's conclusion.

What belongs in an update rather than a correction?

A later closure, object substitution, or schedule extension usually calls for an update. A false statement in the original story calls for a correction.