Exhibition catalogue

There are two types of exhibition catalogue (or exhibition catalog): a printed list of exhibits at an art exhibition; and a directory of exhibitors at a trade fair or business-to-business event.

Art or museum exhibition catalogues

Catalogues for art or museum exhibitions may range in scale from a single printed sheet to a lavish hardcover "coffee table book". The advent of cheap colour-printing in the 1960s transformed what had usually been simple "handlists" with several works to each page into large scale "descriptive catalogues" that are intended as both contributions to scholarship and books likely to appeal to many general readers. The catalogues for exhibitions held at a museum are now often far more detailed than the catalogues of their permanent collections.

In the early 21st century, exhibitions that gather items from other institutions (museums, galleries, libraries, etc.) and that are elaborately publicized very often have catalogues in the form of substantial books.