title: “artMail: messages from your gallery”

This guide covers the Org-mail. If your gallery has not switched it on you will not see it in your portal, and nothing here will match what you see — ask whoever runs the gallery.

artMail: messages from your gallery

For member artists. artMail is your gallery’s mail inside the member portal: messages the gallery’s staff send you, the files that come with them, and a copy of the emails the gallery has sent you. Outside art galleries the same page is called opsMail; it works the same way.

New here? Start with Signing in.

Your gallery may not have this. artMail is a module a gallery chooses. If there is no artMail page when you press Me (it sits next to My Profile), your gallery has not turned it on, and there is nothing for you to do. If you open the page by a saved link and it says Member mail is not switched on, that is the same thing, not a fault.

The page and its count

To open it, press Me, then artMail. This works the same way on a computer and on a phone.

The red number on artMail is how many messages you have not opened yet. It goes down as soon as you open one. The same count shows on the Me button, so you can see it from any page.

Opening a message is what tells the gallery you have read it. The gallery can see whether, and when, you opened each message it sent. Nothing else counts: seeing the subject in the list is not opening it.

Getting an email or a text when a message arrives

At the top of the artMail page, How you hear about new mail has your settings for this gallery:

• Email me a copy of each artMail message. Off until you tick it. When it is on, each message the gallery sends you also arrives by email, with the whole message text and a Reply in the portal button. Files and formatting stay in the portal.
• Text me when I have new artMail. Shown only if your gallery has Text Alerts. This switch is off and greyed out, and you cannot turn it on: no text is sent the moment new artMail arrives. The note under it reads Text reminders for artMail are set in the Text Alerts section of My Profile., and its link opens My Profile at the Text Alerts section (or press Me, then My Profile, then scroll to Text Alerts). That is the one place text reminders for artMail are set: if your gallery offers artMail notifications, such as unread messages and you agree to them there, you can get a reminder about artMail you have not opened (at most one text a day), and you turn it off or on again with the artMail notifications switch in that section. If you have not signed up for texts yet, the note reads sign up for texts in the Text Alerts section of My Profile. instead. Nothing on this page changes it. If you turn it back on, you get at most one text about what is still unread. New artMail still shows in your portal, and as an email copy if you turned those on.

To stop email copies you can also use the Turn off email copies link at the bottom of any copy, or your email program’s unsubscribe button. That turns off copies from this gallery only; another gallery you belong to keeps your setting there.

Good to know:

• Reading the email does not count as reading the message. The gallery sees a message as read only when you open it in the portal.
• Reply in the portal, so the gallery’s staff see your reply with the message.
• For something urgent, such as a closure, the gallery can email a message to every member even if you have not turned email copies on.

Your inbox

1. Sign in to your gallery’s member portal.
2. Press Me, then artMail.
3. The Inbox lists the newest first. A message you have not opened has a dot beside it and a bold subject. Each line shows who sent it and when.
4. Select a message to open it.

A message marked Urgent is one the gallery flagged as urgent. One that says Please acknowledge is waiting for you to confirm you read it (see below).

Copies of the emails the gallery sent you

The inbox also lists a copy of the emails the gallery sends you while artMail is on: a piece sold, an updated sale, a payout, the calendar (your week of shifts, a shift that needs somebody, a change to your shifts), a gallery notice and an invitation. These are marked Email copy with the kind of email beside it.

1. In the Inbox, select a line marked Email copy.
2. The email opens exactly as it was sent. Its links work and open in a new tab.

They are read only: you cannot reply to them here or archive them. Emails the gallery sent you before it turned artMail on are not in the list. An invitation copy links to the gallery’s portal rather than to the one-time invitation link.

Reading a message

The message shows what the gallery wrote and, under it, any files that came with it. The gallery can format its messages, so you may see bold text, lists and links; a link opens in a new tab. A message the gallery marked as urgent shows an Urgent marker under its subject.

Corrected messages. If the gallery finds a mistake in a message, it can take the message back from members who have not opened it yet and send a corrected version instead:

• If you had not opened it, it disappears from your inbox and the corrected version is there in its place.
• If you had already read it, you keep it, and the corrected version arrives as a new message marked Corrected. Go by the corrected one.

A message the gallery took back cannot be opened any more, even from a link in an email copy you received earlier.

• To save a file, select Download and the file’s name. The file comes straight from the portal; you must be signed in.

Times in your Inbox and Archived lists and on a message are your gallery’s local time, with the time zone named (for example 3:05 PM EDT), wherever you are reading it from. A message shows the same time in the list as when you open it.

Printing a message

You can print a message, or save it as a PDF, with its whole conversation.

1. In your portal, press Me, then artMail.
2. Select the message to open it.
3. Select Print, next to the subject.
4. Your browser’s print window opens. Choose your printer, or choose Save as PDF to keep a file.

What is printed:

• your gallery’s logo and name, and artMail (or opsMail);
• the subject, and the words Urgent or Corrected if the message is marked that way;
• who it is From, that it is To you, and when it was Sent;
• the message, with its pictures and formatting. A link prints its web address after the link text, so it can be typed in from paper;
• every reply, yours and the gallery’s, in order, each under a line saying who wrote it and when;
• the names and sizes of any files, with Not printed. Open in artMail to download. The files themselves are not printed;
• Acknowledged by you and the time, if you acknowledged it;
• at the foot, Printed by your name and the date. In Chrome and Edge each page is also numbered Page 1 of 2; other browsers leave the page numbers out.

The buttons, the reply box and the rest of the portal are left off the page. A copy of an email the gallery sent you prints the same way: open it from the inbox and select Print.

Replying to the gallery

1. Open the message.
2. Type in Reply to the gallery at the bottom.
3. Select Send reply.

Only the gallery’s staff see your reply. If the message went to many members, none of the others see what you wrote, and there is no “reply to everyone”. Your reply appears in the conversation marked You. When the gallery answers your reply, the answer appears in the same conversation and only you see it.

Private numbers are refused. If your reply contains what looks like a Social Security number, a payment card number, a bank routing and account number, or a driver’s license or passport number, it is not sent. The message under the box says which kind of number it found. Take the number out and send again; there is no way to send it anyway. If the gallery needs one of those numbers from you, ask them how they want to receive it.

Acknowledging

Some messages ask you to confirm you have read them. Those show The gallery asked you to confirm you have read this and an Acknowledge button.

1. Open the message.
2. Select Acknowledge.

The page then shows the date and time you acknowledged it, and the gallery can see it too. You only need to do it once. Messages that do not ask for it have no button.

Archiving

1. Open the message.
2. Select Archive at the bottom.

The message leaves your inbox and moves to Archived (the button next to Inbox at the top of the page). Nothing is ever deleted: to bring a message back, open it from Archived and select Move back to the inbox.

How long messages are kept

The gallery’s messages, your replies and the record of what you opened and acknowledged are kept for 7 years. A conversation is deleted 7 years after anything last happened on it, and a copy of an email 7 years after it was sent. You can archive a message, but you cannot delete it.

If you want your mail erased, ask the gallery. The messages that were yours alone (your replies and what was sent to you alone) lose their text and files, your name and email are removed from each message, and your email copies are deleted. A message the gallery sent to several members stays as it was for the others. The gallery’s record keeps that each thing happened, without your name.

When staff are viewing your portal

If you asked the gallery for help and a staff member is viewing your portal (you are told when that happens), they see your mail as you do, but they cannot reply, acknowledge or archive for you, and their looking does not count as you opening a message.

Guest artists

If you are a guest artist at the gallery, you have artMail only if the gallery has opened it to guests. Then you get the messages it sends to all members, and everything above applies to you too.