Thurston County Museum of Fine Arts
Custom Website Design
Website Copywriting
Email Marketing Kickstart
Thurston County Museum of Fine Arts (TCMoFA) transforms underutilized public spaces into pop-up art exhibitions. As momentum behind the project grew, TCMoFA was in need of a functional, easy-to-navigate website with a museum-worthy design. Together, we identified three primary goals: (1) increase museum awareness and attendance (2) increase donations, and (3) attract talented and diverse local artists to submit work for future exhibitions.
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Armed with a paint sprayer and a whole lot of creative grit, TCMoFA creates high-caliber art exhibitions from almost nothing. I wanted their website to look and feel like a major cultural institution in the same way that TCMoFA’s self-appointed “museum” exists in both a serious and tongue-in-cheek way. The homepage highlights upcoming events and invites community support and engagement.
Exhibitions + Events
TCMoFA’s pop-up exhibitions often last only 3-4 days, so creating a digital archive of past events that could be revisited again and again was a top priority. Likewise, it was important to clearly communicate information about upcoming exhibitions to increase attendance and artist participation. I designed the Past and Upcoming Events pages to do just this.
About the Museum
TCMoFA is made possible by a team of passionate volunteers with big hearts and big vision. The website introduces each of the co-founders, putting faces and stories to the rad humans who make the museum magic happen. It also details the museum’s mission, values, process, and vision for the future.
Copywriting Excerpt
Creativity:
TCMoFA is a project devoted to and fueled by creativity. Our exhibitions celebrate the creativity of local artists across a wide range of mediums. As an organization, creativity is our greatest tool. It carries us, again and again, from empty space to museum exhibition. It inspires us to think ambitiously, question traditional museum models, and create the things we want to exist.
Community:
This place-based project is a grand experiment in community-driven public art. Our creative ecosystem includes artists, volunteers, sponsors, local businesses, generous landlords, and the local community, who come out in droves to see and support the art. Together, we have created something bigger than the sum of our parts. Art is social fabric and connective force.
Inclusivity:
From the walls of our museums to the seats at our curatorial tables, TCMoFA strives to represent and include people of all ages, ethnicities, sexualities, genders, and abilities. Our CSMoFA program is designed expressly to center Indigenous artists and their perspectives. We do not charge artists submission fees and all exhibitions are free to enter. Art is for everyone.
"[Ellen] gathered our mess of information, photos, and documents and organized it all into an aesthetically pleasing and easy-to-navigate design. She created a website on par with some of the most well-known art museums out there. We were blown away."
—Kirsten Miller, Thurston County Museum of Fine Arts
Email Marketing Kickstart
Once the museum’s website was complete, I set the team up with an email marketing platform. I created an automated email welcoming new subscribers and encouraging them to explore the website. I also set up templates so the team could easily send newsletters to particular audiences—pre-event reminders, post-event recaps, and calls for volunteers and artist submissions.
