An art review that matters does three things in order: it shows a reader who was not there what the work actually is, it makes a judgement, and it gives the evidence that judgement rests on. Everything else (context, comparison, a memorable line) serves those three jobs. The practical method is simple to state and hard to do: look for longer than feels comfortable, describe in exact terms, argue from what you saw, then cut the draft until only information and argument remain.
Why the review still matters
The exhibition review is an old form with a clear job. In 1759 Friedrich Melchior Grimm asked Denis Diderot to report on the Paris Salon for the subscribers of the Correspondance littéraire, readers scattered across Europe who would never stand in the Louvre. Diderot covered the Salons from 1759 to 1771 and again in 1775 and 1781, and those reports became the most celebrated part of the newsletter. His problem is still the reviewer’s problem: making a picture present in words for someone who cannot see it.
Reviews also carry weight. Critics have named whole movements, sometimes as insults: the history of art criticism records that “Impressionism” and “Cubism” began as disparaging labels before the artists adopted them. A review can shape what gets seen, bought and remembered. That is the reason to write one well, and the reason to write one carefully.
The profession has its own organisation. The International Association of Art Critics, known as AICA, was founded in 1950 and describes itself on its official site as uniting over 5,000 art professionals from 95 countries, with a mission that includes protecting “the ethical and professional interests of its members” (checked October 2026). You do not need membership to write a good review, but the existence of that ethical framing tells you something: criticism is treated as a discipline with standards, not a stream of reactions.
Look first, write later
Most weak reviews are written too early. Before you draft a sentence, give the work enough time for a first impression to settle and then be tested. Walk the show once without notes. Walk it again with a notebook. If you can, come back on another day, because light, crowds and your own mood all change what you see.
Note what is physically there:
- materials and process (oil thinned to a stain, cast bronze, a two-channel video loop)
- scale in relation to the body and the room
- colour, surface and finish, including what changes as you move
- sound, duration and running order for time-based work
- the hang: what sits next to what, and where the curators send you first
- the wall text and the catalogue, including what they leave out
Check your terms rather than guessing them. The Tate glossary of art terms is a quick reference for movements and techniques, and the Getty’s Art & Architecture Thesaurus is the standard controlled vocabulary used by museums and libraries for describing materials, objects and styles. When the label and your eyes disagree, ask the gallery.
Describe so the reader can see it
Description is where a review earns trust. The entry on art criticism puts it plainly: criticism includes a descriptive aspect in which the work is translated into words “sufficiently” to allow a case to be made. If the reader cannot picture the work, your verdict has nothing to stand on.
Susan Sontag made a version of this argument in “Against Interpretation”, first published in the Evergreen Review in December 1964 and collected in 1966. As the essay’s summary notes, she wanted criticism to develop a descriptive vocabulary for how a work appears and how it does what it does, and to “reveal the sensuous surface of art without mucking about in it”. You need not share her suspicion of interpretation to take the practical lesson: describe the surface before you dig under it.
Precise description means nouns and verbs doing the work. “A large, expressive painting” tells the reader almost nothing. A canvas taller than the viewer, its paint scraped back to the weave in the lower third, tells them where to look. Describe behaviour too: whether a sculpture changes as you circle it, whether a video’s sound bleeds into the next room, whether a series loses force when hung too tightly.
A quick test: delete every evaluative word from a paragraph of description. If the paragraph still gives a clear picture, it is description. If it collapses, you were judging before you had shown anything.
Make a judgement you can defend
A review without a judgement is a press release. The judgement does not have to be harsh, and it does not have to be final, but it has to be stated and it has to be traceable to evidence the reader has already been given.
State your criteria. You might care most about formal invention, technical control, the clarity of an idea, or how a show uses its building. Say which, then apply the same standards to a graduate show and to a major retrospective. Judge the work against what it attempts and against strong examples of that kind of work, not against a different show you wish had been made.
There are two old positions worth knowing. Matthew Arnold, in “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time” (1864), described the critical effort as trying “to see the object as in itself it really is”; Oscar Wilde, in “The Critic as Artist” (collected in Intentions, 1891), had his speaker Gilbert reply that the highest criticism “is the record of one’s own soul”. Most useful reviews sit between them. Your response matters, because you are the only witness the reader has, but it matters as evidence about the work, not as a diary entry.
John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, broadcast on BBC Two in January 1972, is a reminder that judgement also involves asking what a work assumes about its viewer, who commissioned it and what it shows of the social world in which it was made. Context belongs in a review when it changes what the reader sees, not as padding.
Fair comment and the cost of carelessness
Criticism can be sharply negative and still fair. What it cannot be is careless. The best-known warning in British art writing is John Ruskin’s 1877 attack on Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, shown at the Grosvenor Gallery. Writing in Fors Clavigera on 2 July 1877, Ruskin said he never expected “to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”. According to the account of the Ruskin trial, Whistler sued for libel and the case was heard on 25 and 26 November 1878. The jury found for Whistler but awarded a farthing in damages, costs were split, and Whistler was bankrupt by May 1879.
In England and Wales today, the relevant defence is “honest opinion” under section 3 of the Defamation Act 2013. It requires that the statement was one of opinion, that it indicated “whether in general or specific terms, the basis of the opinion”, and that an honest person could have held it on the basis of facts existing at the time. This is not legal advice, but the overlap with good practice is striking: an opinion that shows its basis is both fairer and safer than a bare verdict. Keep fact and opinion visibly separate, and make sure the facts are right.
Declare what could colour your view
Readers trust a review more when they know where the writer stands. The Guardian’s editorial code of practice (March 2026 edition) says a publication “must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact”, that it is “always necessary to declare an interest” where a journalist has a significant connection, and that a journalist generally should not write about a relative, partner or close friend. You may not write for a national paper, but the same habits apply to a blog, a student magazine or a regional title.
In practice that means telling your editor, and if relevant your readers, if you know the artist, have worked with the gallery or curated a related show. If the connection is close, pass the review to someone else.
Edit for the reader
George Orwell’s 1946 essay Politics and the English Language ends with six rules that suit review writing well, among them “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out” and “Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.” Art writing has its own stock phrases, and the six rules are a good filter for them.
A practical editing pass:
- Cut the opening paragraph and see whether the second one makes a better start. It often does.
- Replace each abstract adjective (“powerful”, “haunting”, “important”) with the detail that produced the feeling.
- Check every name, title, date, medium and dimension against the gallery’s list of works.
- Make sure the practical details are present: venue, dates, opening hours if relevant, and the full exhibition title.
- Read the piece aloud. Anything you stumble over, the reader will too.
- Give it to someone who has not seen the show. If they cannot describe one work back to you, the description needs another draft.
Read widely and keep writing
The fastest way to improve is to read reviews you admire and work out why they succeed. Monthly and quarterly titles give room to argue at length: Art Monthly has carried exhibition reviews in Britain for decades, Apollo covers historic and contemporary art, and The White Review publishes longer critical essays. Compare how different writers handle the same exhibition, and note which descriptions let you see the work.
Then write regularly, including about small shows. Regional galleries, artist-run spaces and craft centres often receive little serious coverage, and a careful review can be the first proper record a show gets. We write about exhibitions in that spirit at Visionary Art, an independent cultural review that also runs a gallery in Ruthin, north Wales. For a working critic’s view of the form, the London-based art and literary critic Maria Bregman writes exhibition reviews and catalogue essays in English and Russian.
A review that matters is rarely the loudest one. It is the one a reader can test against the work and find accurate, the one an artist can disagree with and still learn from, and the one that will still read as a fair record when the show has closed.
Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons