Temporary exhibitions play a central role in the cultural life of museums and galleries. Permanent collections shape the identity and memory of an institution, while temporary exhibitions often sustain its rhythm - attracting audiences, activating spaces, introducing new interpretations and keeping the museum or gallery alive as a site of cultural dialogue.

This raises an important question: how do we actually describe an exhibition when considering its long-term digital preservation? The question is not only curatorial, but also informational. Preserving exhibitions is part of understanding the history of artworks, curatorial approaches and the systems through which cultural memory is documented, structured and transmitted.

The exhibition is increasingly understood as a connected system of data: artworks, ideas, artists, curators, institutions, places, versions, texts, photographs, movements, loans, interpretations and the traces that remain after the event. The “Exhibitions” model in Linked Art approaches the exhibition as both a conceptual structure and a realized event. At the same time, the model prepares exhibition information for use within digital environments, allowing it to be more easily structured, connected, exchanged between systems and used for future search, analysis, and preservation.

An important distinction is that an exhibition may exist as an idea, project, or curatorial concept long before it is realized. It may even never take place due to lack of funding, institutional change, war, pandemic, or other circumstances. Nevertheless, the exhibition concept itself remains a cultural fact.

The Linked Art model allows exhibitions to be classified not only through traditional formal categories - solo, group, retrospective, or thematic exhibitions, but also according to the way their concept emerges. One exhibition may be built around a particular artist, for example as a retrospective or anniversary exhibition. Another may be inspired by a specific artist without necessarily including works by that artist. A third may emerge from a historical, social, or cultural question.

The curator formulates a cultural question, creates context and constructs a narrative. Two exhibitions may formally be group exhibitions, yet conceptually entirely different if one is based on artistic influence and the other on a socio-historical theme.

Particularly significant is the relationship between the exhibition and the artworks themselves. In many cases, artworks are created, adapted, or completed specifically for a particular exhibition. A large-scale painting, installation, or wall intervention may emerge in direct dialogue with the space, the visitor’s route and the curatorial concept. In this sense, the exhibition participates in the genesis of the artwork.

At the same time, participation in an exhibition becomes part of the life of the artwork itself. When an artwork is presented within a particular institution, in a specific curatorial context and alongside certain other works, a new layer of information accumulates around it. The artwork acquires an exhibition history - catalogues, photographs, critical texts, audience reactions and institutional relationships. The phrase “this artwork has been exhibited in Vienna, Rome and Sofia” is no longer merely a reference note, but part of its cultural biography.

The logic of travelling exhibitions is equally important. An exhibition may maintain a shared concept while taking different forms in different cities and institutions. Each venue may involve a different selection of works, a different spatial arrangement, a different visitor route and a different context of perception. In this sense, a travelling exhibition is not simply the same exhibition mechanically transferred from one place to another, but rather a series of connected yet independent realizations.

The diversity of these examples demonstrates that the exhibition can be interpreted not only as a cultural event, but also as an archival element. What remains after the exhibition? How do we document not only the list of artworks, but the exhibition environment itself? How are the relationships between idea, concept, space, artworks and audience preserved?

This logic is closely connected to the working model “Field Archive” developed within Art Stylus. Within this approach, the exhibition is observed simultaneously as a cultural event, a spatial environment, a visual narrative, and a temporary archival object. Photography, observation, spatial notes and archival reflection are not simply additions to the exhibition, but part of its future memory.

“Field Archive” prepares a series of exhibition observations structured in dialogue with the “Exhibitions” model in Linked Art. The goal is for the practical description of exhibitions to support both a deeper understanding of the relationships between artworks, ideas, spaces and audiences, and the future technical structuring of museum and archival data.

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