What Is the TOK Exhibition?

The TOK Exhibition is the internally assessed component of the IB Theory of Knowledge course. Introduced in the 2022 curriculum revision, it replaced the previous TOK presentation and reflects a shift in IB philosophy: rather than asking students to demonstrate TOK knowledge abstractly, the exhibition asks them to show how TOK concepts are already present in the world around them.

The task is deceptively simple: choose one of 35 IB-prescribed IA prompts, select three real-world objects that connect meaningfully to that prompt, and write a commentary for each object explaining the connection. The objects can be physical (a photograph, a scientific instrument, a newspaper front page, a painting) or digital (a social media post, a website, a video clip). They must be real — not invented or hypothetical.

What makes the exhibition intellectually demanding is not the writing task itself but the quality of thinking it requires. The connection between each object and the IA prompt must be genuinely rooted in TOK concepts — not just thematically related. An object that illustrates a knowledge claim, raises a knowledge question, or embodies a tension between different ways of knowing is far stronger than one that is merely “about” the topic the prompt mentions.

Assessment Weight and Marking Process

The exhibition contributes 33% of the final TOK grade. It is marked out of 10 by your classroom teacher using an IB-provided rubric, then submitted to IB for external moderation. The moderator reviews a sample of exhibitions from your school to check that your teacher’s marks are consistent with IB standards. If the moderator finds systemic over- or under-marking, all marks from that school are adjusted accordingly.

The IA Prompt: One Prompt, Three Objects

All three of your objects must connect to the same single IA prompt. You choose this prompt from a list of 35 provided by IB. The prompts are written as knowledge questions — they are broadly phrased enough to accommodate almost any real-world object, but specific enough to require genuine TOK thinking.

The prompts are grouped across the core theme (Knowledge and the Knower) and the four optional themes (Language, Technology, Politics, Religion). However, IB does not require you to choose a prompt from a theme your school has studied — any of the 35 is available to any student.

Your three objects should collectively demonstrate that you understand the prompt at a deep level — not just one interpretation of it, but multiple dimensions. The best exhibitions use each of the three objects to explore a different facet of the IA prompt, together building a more complete and nuanced picture than any single object could provide.

What Counts as a Valid Object?

The IB is deliberately permissive about what constitutes an object. Valid objects include: a photograph (taken by you or found), a painting or sculpture, a newspaper article or headline, a scientific diagram or instrument, a piece of music or its notation, a legal document, a map, a mathematical proof, a social media post, a film still, a religious text passage, or an everyday object with cultural significance. The key test is not what the object is but what TOK claim it allows you to make.

Invalid objects include: vague concepts (“war”, “education”), fictional objects with no specific real-world instantiation, and objects that are relevant to the IA prompt’s topic but do not actually embody a knowledge question.