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Exhibition Catalog Creator

Turn the catalog for your exhibition into a flipbook that stays open long after the gallery lights go off, with Flipbooks AI. Plates, artist biographies, curatorial essays, dimensions, materials and the full checklist keep the typography your designer set, and a reader can zoom into a brushstroke or follow a footnote without leaving the page. Made for museums, galleries, curators and artist run spaces. There is no cost, no advertising and no watermark, and no limit on the number of shows you catalog.

Exhibition Catalog Creator

How to Publish an Exhibition Catalog

1

Upload the Catalog PDF

Upload the file your designer delivered. Flipbooks AI keeps the spreads exactly as they were set, with the plates at full resolution and every caption still under the work it belongs to, and builds a preview straight away.

2

Link the Notes and Add the Audio

Add the museum or gallery identity, link the footnotes so a reader can follow a reference and come back, drop in artist audio or an installation video, and add a contents page pointing to the essays and the checklist.

3

Publish and Share the Link

Publish in one click, then put the link on the exhibition page, in the press release and behind a QR code on the wall text. Set a password first if the catalog is embargoed until the private view.

How to Create an Exhibition Catalog Flipbook

How to Create an Exhibition Catalog Flipbook

Start from the file the designer delivered. Upload the catalog PDF and a flipbook preview appears with the spreads intact and the plates at full resolution. Add the museum or gallery logo, set the colours to the house style, link the footnotes, drop in the artist interview audio, and add a contents page that jumps to the essays and the checklist. Open it on a phone to check that captions still read at that size. Publish, and put the link on the exhibition page and the QR code on the wall text.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog

What Is an Exhibition Catalog?

An exhibition catalog is the printed record of a show. It reproduces the works, lists them with their dimensions, materials, dates and lenders, carries one or more essays that argue for why these things are together in this room, and usually holds a biography or a chronology at the back. Flipbooks AI takes that document as a PDF, exactly as the designer set it, and turns it into a flipbook whose pages turn like the book. Nothing is reflowed, so a full bleed plate stays full bleed and a caption stays under the work it belongs to. What is added is the reading: zoom into the surface of a painting, tap a footnote and land on the reference, or play the artist speaking beside their own work.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog
What Is an Exhibition Catalog?
What Is an Exhibition Catalog?
What Is an Exhibition Catalog?
What Is an Exhibition Catalog?

Plates That Hold Up Under a Zoom

A plate that falls apart when a reader looks closely is worse than no plate at all. Reproductions keep their resolution here, so someone can zoom into the impasto on a canvas, read the plate number on a print, or study the join in a sculpture without asking the museum for a bigger file. That matters most for the works nobody can visit any more, either because the show has closed or because the piece has gone back to a private lender. A catalog that lets a reader look properly is doing the job the printed book was invented for.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog
Plates That Hold Up Under a Zoom

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Essays, Footnotes and the Apparatus

Essays, Footnotes and the Apparatus

Scholarly text has requirements a marketing brochure does not. Footnotes have to be findable, references have to be exact, and a reader following an argument should not lose their place doing it. Link each note so a tap goes to the reference and back again. Keep the bibliography, the exhibition history and the list of previous publications intact rather than trimming them for space, because those are the pages another researcher will use. The essay reads as the author wrote it, with the typography the designer chose, which is not something a text extraction can promise.

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Why the Catalog Outlives the Show
Why the Catalog Outlives the Show
Why the Catalog Outlives the Show
Why the Catalog Outlives the Show

Why the Catalog Outlives the Show

A show comes down after ten weeks. The catalog is what remains, and it is the reason anyone can write about the exhibition in five years time. Print serves that well and always will, but a print run is finite, and the copies end up in the hands of the people who happened to be there. A flipbook has no edition size. A student in another country reads the essay, a curator planning a related show finds the checklist, a scholar cites a plate. The link does not expire when the gallery reopens with something else, and the reader is not asked to download a two hundred megabyte file first.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog

The Checklist With Dimensions and Materials

The checklist is the part that gets cited longest. Every work with its title, date, medium, dimensions, edition where relevant, credit line and lender. Keep it complete and keep it consistent, because a registrar at another institution will read it as a source. A contents entry pointing straight to the checklist saves a reader forty pages of scrolling. If the show tours and the checklist changes at each venue, publish a version per venue rather than a single list with footnoted exceptions that nobody untangles correctly later.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog
The Checklist With Dimensions and Materials

Exhibition Catalog Alternatives

Issuu

Issuu

  • Free & Unlimited
  • No Watermarks
  • High Resolution Plates
  • Audio & Video
  • Reading Analytics
  • Mobile Ready
  • Linked Footnotes
  • Password Protection
  • Instant Sharing
  • Fast Loading
Flipbooks AI

Flipbooks AI

  • Free & Unlimited
  • No Watermarks
  • High Resolution Plates
  • Audio & Video
  • Reading Analytics
  • Mobile Ready
  • Linked Footnotes
  • Password Protection
  • Instant Sharing
  • Fast Loading
Blurb

Blurb

  • Free & Unlimited
  • No Watermarks
  • High Resolution Plates
  • Audio & Video
  • Reading Analytics
  • Mobile Ready
  • Linked Footnotes
  • Password Protection
  • Instant Sharing
  • Fast Loading
FlipHTML5

FlipHTML5

  • Free & Unlimited
  • No Watermarks
  • High Resolution Plates
  • Audio & Video
  • Reading Analytics
  • Mobile Ready
  • Linked Footnotes
  • Password Protection
  • Instant Sharing
  • Fast Loading
Credit Lines, Lenders and Photo Rights

Credit Lines, Lenders and Photo Rights

Getting the credits right is not administrative tidiness, it is the condition on which the works were lent and the images licensed. Give the credit lines a page of their own and check them against the loan agreements rather than against last year catalog. Name the photographers. Where an image is licensed for a period, note it, because a catalog that lives online lives longer than the licence sometimes does. Being able to correct a misspelled lender name and republish in a minute is one of the quiet advantages over a print run.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog

Features Built for Curators and Registrars

The things a catalog actually needs are here, and none of them cost anything. Plates keep their resolution so a reader can look closely at a surface rather than at a smudge. Footnotes and endnotes can be linked, so a reference is one tap away and the reader returns to where they were. The checklist can be arranged so a registrar finds a work by number instead of scrolling. Audio and video sit inside the pages for an artist interview or an installation walkthrough. Add a downloadable press image sheet, a link to the collection record, and a page of lender acknowledgements that is easy to correct when someone is missed.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog
Features Built for Curators and Registrars
Features Built for Curators and Registrars
Features Built for Curators and Registrars
Features Built for Curators and Registrars

Match the Catalog to the House Style

A museum has a visual identity that has usually taken years to settle, and the catalog should sit inside it rather than beside it. Add the logo, set the colours, and choose a page turn that is quiet: a catalog is not the place for a flourish. If the institution publishes a series, keep the same treatment across every volume so they read as a run. Galleries working with a designer per show can keep each catalog distinct while the frame around it stays consistent, which is usually the right balance.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog
Match the Catalog to the House Style
Audio, Video and the Artist Speaking

Audio, Video and the Artist Speaking

A catalog can carry things a printed book cannot. Put the artist talking about a work on the spread where it appears. Add the installation walkthrough filmed before the opening, so a reader who never stood in the room still understands the scale and the sequence. A conservator can explain what was found under the varnish. A performance work can be shown rather than described, which is the honest way to catalog it. All of it plays inside the pages, so the reader stays in the catalog instead of ending up in a video site.

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Fits a Solo Show or a Touring Survey
Fits a Solo Show or a Touring Survey
Fits a Solo Show or a Touring Survey
Fits a Solo Show or a Touring Survey

Fits a Solo Show or a Touring Survey

A project space showing eight works needs a slim document with good plates and one short text. A touring survey of a forty year career needs three essays, a chronology, a bibliography and two hundred plates, and it needs to travel with a different checklist at each venue. Both are the same job here. Publish one catalog per exhibition, or one per venue on a tour with the local checklist swapped in and the essays unchanged. Art fairs can publish a booth catalog for each edition. Nothing is capped, so a small space can catalog every show it mounts rather than only the ones with a budget behind them.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog

Help People Find the Show Online

Exhibitions are searched for by artist name, by title and by venue, often years afterwards. A catalog flipbook can be set up so search engines read it, and embedding it on the exhibition page adds real content there and keeps a visitor reading. Give it a title carrying the artist, the exhibition title and the venue, because that is what a student types. A catalog that is findable does the work of an archive without anyone having to build one.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog
Help People Find the Show Online

Who Publishes Exhibition Catalogs

2456+

Museums

6

Galleries

13

Curators

24

Artist Run Spaces

65

Art Fairs

9

University Museums

Accessible to Every Visitor

Accessible to Every Visitor

A museum has an obligation here that a commercial publisher does not always feel as sharply. Screen reader support means a visitor with low vision can hear an essay and a caption rather than being handed an image of text. Keyboard navigation lets a reader move through the catalog without a mouse. Clear contrast and generous type help everyone, including the visitor reading in a dim gallery. Writing full alternative text for the plates is work, and it is the work that decides whether the catalog reaches your whole audience or most of it.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog

Reads in the Gallery and on the Train Home

Visitors read a catalog in two places: standing in front of the work, and afterwards, when the show has settled in their head. Flipbooks AI serves both. In the gallery it opens from a QR code on the wall text, so someone reading a label can go straight to the entry for that work. Later it opens on the phone in a pocket, with pages that turn under a thumb and plates that hold together when zoomed. Nothing is installed and no account is needed, which is what makes a visitor actually open it rather than promising themselves they will look it up later.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog
Reads in the Gallery and on the Train Home
Reads in the Gallery and on the Train Home
Reads in the Gallery and on the Train Home
Reads in the Gallery and on the Train Home

Large Plates That Still Load Quickly

Catalogs are heavy. Two hundred high resolution plates make a file that nobody wants to download on a phone in a gallery basement with one bar of signal. Flipbooks AI compresses carefully, so a plate keeps its tonal range while the page arrives quickly, and the first spreads appear while the rest come in behind them. The reader starts reading immediately. That is the difference between a catalog someone opens at the show and a catalog they bookmark and never return to.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog
Large Plates That Still Load Quickly
Works With InDesign and Collection Records

Works With InDesign and Collection Records

The catalog is almost always designed in Adobe InDesign, and nothing here changes that. Export the PDF and upload it. Link entries out to the collection record on your own site, to the artist page, to a press image download, or to the ticketing page while the show is still running. Drop the embed code onto the exhibition page so the catalog sits with the wall text and the events listing. The file the designer delivered is the file readers see, which is what a designer will ask you first.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog
A Free Catalog Tool With No Watermark
A Free Catalog Tool With No Watermark
A Free Catalog Tool With No Watermark
A Free Catalog Tool With No Watermark

A Free Catalog Tool With No Watermark

Flipbooks AI is completely free. No watermark sits over a plate, no page limit truncates an essay, and no upgrade stands between a curator and the reading statistics. Publishing costs are the reason a great many exhibitions are never cataloged at all: the print quote arrives, the number is larger than the exhibition budget, and the show goes unrecorded. A gallery working from a small grant can now put out a proper catalog for each of its shows, keep every one of them online, and spend the print money on the two exhibitions that genuinely need a book.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog

An Archive of Every Show You Mounted

Publish a catalog for each exhibition and, without doing anything else, an institutional archive builds itself. A researcher can trace what a space showed across a decade. A curator can check whether a work has been exhibited before and where. A gallery can send a collector the catalog from the show where they first saw an artist. None of it depends on somebody finding the last box of printed copies in a storeroom, and none of it disappears when a member of staff leaves and takes a hard drive with them.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog
An Archive of Every Show You Mounted

What Curators and Galleries Say

We mount six shows a year and we could only ever afford to print two catalogs. Now every exhibition gets one, and the four that used to vanish without a record are online with the full checklist. A researcher wrote to us last month about a show from two years ago because she found the essay, which would simply not have happened before.

Marketing team
Marketing team

Product catalogs

The plates were what convinced our designer. She was certain a screen version would flatten the paintings and it does not: you can zoom right into the surface. We put a QR code on the wall text and watched visitors stand in front of a work reading the entry for it, which is exactly what a catalog is supposed to do.

Studio owner
Studio owner

Client lookbooks

I work with lenders who care a great deal about how their works are credited. Being able to correct a credit line the same afternoon someone points it out, rather than living with it for the life of a print run, has saved me two awkward conversations already this year.

School office
School office

Newsletters and programmes

We tour a survey exhibition to three venues and each one has a different checklist. Publishing a version per venue with the same essays was straightforward, and each has its own link for the local press. The analytics also showed us that readers were stopping halfway through the chronology, which told us something useful about its length.

Independent designer
Independent designer

Portfolio flipbooks

Embargoed Catalogs and Private Views

Embargoed Catalogs and Private Views

Some catalogs cannot be public yet. A press embargo runs until the opening. A collector preview goes to a small list. An acquisition is not announced. Password protection keeps the catalog to the people you send the password to, and downloading can be turned off. Be clear eyed about what that means: the password gates the reading experience rather than the underlying file, so an unannounced attribution or an unpublished provenance is safer left out of the document until the embargo lifts.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog

Reach Visitors, Lenders and Press at Once

One link serves everyone the catalog has to reach. Send it to press with the opening announcement. Send it to the lenders who trusted you with the work, so they see how it was shown and credited. Put a QR code on the wall text and on the invitation card. Embed it on the exhibition page of your own website so it is there when a search brings someone to the show a year later. Password protection holds the catalog back until the private view if it is embargoed, then you lift it and the same link works for everyone.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog
Reach Visitors, Lenders and Press at Once
Reach Visitors, Lenders and Press at Once
Reach Visitors, Lenders and Press at Once
Reach Visitors, Lenders and Press at Once

Cheaper Than a Print Run, Not a Replacement

It would be dishonest to pretend this replaces a printed catalog. A book has a weight and a life on a shelf that a screen does not, and for a major exhibition the printed volume is part of the scholarship. What this replaces is the catalog that never got printed because the quote was three times the budget. It also replaces the wait: the digital version can be live on opening night while the book is still at the binder. Most institutions end up doing both, printing a short run for the library and the lenders and publishing the flipbook for everyone else.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog
Cheaper Than a Print Run, Not a Replacement

Compare Exhibition Catalog Tools

ApplicationRatingUnlimited CreditsUsage RatingDescription
10/10Yes1

Flipbooks AI publishes an unlimited number of exhibition catalogs for nothing, with no watermark over a plate, reproductions that stay sharp under a zoom, linked footnotes, artist audio and video inside the pages, and analytics showing which works readers stayed with.

FlipHTML5

5.2/10No2

FlipHTML5 converts a catalog PDF into a flipbook without much setup and has a long list of options for anyone who wants them. Free accounts place its branding on your pages, which is awkward on a page carrying a lender credit line, and the reporting sits in a paid plan.

Issuu

7.1/10No3

Issuu hosts a large public library and is a familiar home for arts publishing, so a catalog there is among documents of a similar kind. Free publishing surrounds your pages with Issuu branding and its own reader, which sits oddly around an embargoed catalog.

Heyzine

8.3/10No4

Heyzine is pleasant to use and its page turn feels right for a book, so a small gallery can publish a show catalog the same week it opens. Free accounts limit how many flipbooks you keep, which a space cataloging every exhibition will run into.

Blurb

6.4/10No5

Blurb prints beautiful short run art books on demand, which is exactly right when you want a physical object for the library, the lenders and the artist. It is a printing route rather than a way to publish a catalog online, so most institutions end up using both.

Adobe InDesign

7.8/10No6

Adobe InDesign is where essentially every exhibition catalog is designed, and nothing here takes its place. What it does not provide is hosting, a link to send to press, or any indication of how the catalog was read once it went out.

Flipsnack

6.9/10No7

Flipsnack includes a browser based editor, useful for a space without a designer that still needs a tidy document. Free use is limited, and removing its branding and reaching the fuller statistics both belong to the paid tiers.

Publuu

8.1/10No8

Publuu makes clean flipbooks and tracks whether a link was opened, which suits sending a catalog to a press list. The free tier behaves as a trial, so an institution keeping a decade of catalogs online would be looking at a paid account.

A Repository PDF

6.5/10No9

Depositing the catalog PDF in an institutional or university repository is the right move for long term preservation and citation, and it should be done regardless. As a reading experience it is a download rather than a book, with no page turn, no linked notes and no audio.

A PDF Download Link

7.6/10No10

Putting the PDF on the exhibition page costs nothing and every reader understands it. It also means a two hundred megabyte download before anyone sees a plate, spreads split in half on a phone, no artist audio, and no idea whether it was ever opened.

Editions for Touring, Education and Press

Editions for Touring, Education and Press

One exhibition often needs more than one document. A touring version with the venue checklist and local acknowledgements. A schools edition with shorter texts and a family trail. A press pack with the images cleared for publication and the credit lines spelled out. Build each as its own flipbook from the same design, and give each its own link. The analytics stay separate, so you learn whether the education edition is actually used before deciding to make one for the next show.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog
See Which Works Held a Reader Longest
See Which Works Held a Reader Longest
See Which Works Held a Reader Longest
See Which Works Held a Reader Longest

See Which Works Held a Reader Longest

Museums have almost never known how a catalog is read. Flipbooks AI shows how many people opened it, which spreads they stayed with and where they put it down. If readers linger on the early works and stop before the last room, the hang or the essay order might be doing something you did not intend. If a particular plate is returned to again and again, that is worth knowing when you choose the cover for the next book. It is not an audience survey, but it is honest information about a document that has always been silent.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog

A Catalog That Will Still Open in Ten Years

Digital publishing has a poor record on longevity. Formats that needed a plugin are unreadable now, and plenty of exhibition microsites from fifteen years ago are gone. Flipbooks AI keeps pace with browsers and web standards, so a catalog published for this show still opens for the researcher who finds it much later. Updates arrive with nothing for the institution to install or maintain. For a document whose whole point is to outlive the exhibition, that is not a small consideration.

Create Your Exhibition Catalog
A Catalog That Will Still Open in Ten Years

Frequently Asked
Exhibition Catalog Creator

What is a digital exhibition catalog?

It is the catalog for a show published as a flipbook. The plates, essays, checklist and credits keep the designed layout, the pages turn like the book, and a reader opens it from a link or a QR code on the wall text without installing anything.

Is Flipbooks AI really free for museums?

Yes. There is no charge, no watermark over a plate, no page limit and no institutional licence. Branding, linked footnotes, audio and video, password protection and reading analytics are all included, whether you mount two shows a year or twenty.

Will the plates hold up when a reader zooms in?

They will. Reproductions keep their resolution, so a reader can look closely at a surface, read an inscription or study a join without asking for a larger file. That matters most for works that have gone back to a lender and cannot be seen again.

Can footnotes and references be linked?

Yes. Notes can be linked so a tap takes a reader to the reference and back to where they were reading. The bibliography, exhibition history and previous publications stay intact, which is what another researcher will actually use.

Does this replace a printed exhibition catalog?

No, and it would be wrong to claim so. A printed book has a life on a shelf this does not. What it replaces is the catalog that was never printed because the quote exceeded the budget, and it can be live on opening night while the book is still at the binder.

Can I keep a catalog private until the opening?

Yes. Set a password so only press and invited guests can open it before the private view, then lift it and the same link serves everyone. Note that a password gates the reading experience rather than the file, so hold back anything genuinely unannounced.

Can I add artist audio or an installation video?

Yes. Audio and video sit inside the pages, so an artist can speak on the spread where the work appears and an installation walkthrough can show the scale of a room. A reader stays inside the catalog rather than ending up on a video site.

Can I publish a different version for each venue?

Yes. Publish one flipbook per venue with the local checklist and acknowledgements while the essays stay the same. Each version has its own link and its own analytics, which is far clearer than one list full of footnoted exceptions.

Have more questions?

If you still have questions or want to explore more details about our features, limitations, and usage, we invite you to visit our full FAQ page.

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