Gallery Opening Email Template — Opening Night

The opening-night invitation a gallery sends its members and press list. This is editorial through and through — a poster hero with a tall accent bar and an oversized serif title, then the things the poster cannot say: how the work was made, when the doors open, and one painting shown large. Refined, unhurried, gallery-cool.

Snapshot

• Goal: drive opening-night attendance and press coverage.
• Audience & tone: collectors, members, and arts press. Editorial, refined, gallery-cool.
• Palette: page #f5f3ef · container #ffffff · text #1c1917 / #78716c (muted) · accent crimson #be162c
• Font: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif
• Artwork: free-form layout hero — a hand-built editorial poster, 600×412 canvas.

Build recipe

Each step is one block in the flat stack, top to bottom. [native] = a real email block. [layout] = a free-form layout embedded as a single image.

1. [layout] Poster hero — a hand-built composition: a tall 8px crimson #be162c bar at x=48 running the full height of the type block, the gallery name at 26px tracked uppercase in crimson, the exhibit title stacked over two lines at 96px #1c1917, the run dates at 26px crimson, and the artist line at 26px muted #78716c. Every support run sits at 26px for a reason: a layout rasterizes at 600 and ships at width: 100%, so a 12px label arrives at ~6px on a 320px phone. Set flush gutters and backgroundColor: #ffffff so the poster shares the container’s field. Check the fit at 600px — Georgia is far wider than a sans stack, and a run that a character-count estimate says fits will still wrap and collide with the element below it.
2. [native] Standfirst — text. “Twelve paintings of the last hour of light, hung in the order she made them.” fontSize: 20, color #1c1917, left, lineHeight: 1.4, paddingTop: 40. There is deliberately no native heading: the poster is the headline, so there is no surface on which to restate it.
3. [native] How it was made — text. “She worked the same stretch of water for two winters, one canvas a week, always between four and five in the afternoon. The light in the last three is barely there.” fontSize: 16, color #78716c, left, lineHeight: 1.6.
4. [native] Opening night — text. “Opening night is Friday 18 September, 6–9pm · press preview from 5.30pm” fontSize: 14, fontWeight: 700, color #1c1917, left. The one fact the poster does not carry.
5. [native] RSVP CTA — button. Label “RSVP for opening night”, crimson #be162c fill, white label (6.3:1), shapeStyle: 0_1, align: left.
6. [native] One work, large — image. A single representative painting at full container width, borderRadius: 6, with real alt text. Set the URL at elements.items[0].image.file.url — the image block holds a collection, and the flat elements.image path is a legacy shape the editor ignores. Pick a picture that agrees with the copy: a hall of portraits under a line about coastal light reads as stock.
7. [native] Caption — text. “Helena Voss, Estuary VII, oil on linen, 2026” fontSize: 12, color #78716c, left, tight above.
8. [native] Run dates — text. “On view to Sunday 1 November · Tuesday to Sunday, 11am–6pm” fontSize: 14, color #78716c, left. Check the closing date falls on an open day — the previous version ran to a Monday, when the gallery is shut.
9. [native] Sign-off rule — divider. #e7e5e4, 1px, width: 96, align: left.
10. [native] Footer — text block. “Storyhouse Gallery · 88 Mulberry Lane · storyhouse.gallery”. fontSize: 12, color #78716c, left. A hand-styled text footer, not the address block — that block computes its content from workspace branding, so it renders your own company details rather than the sender’s.

Make it yours

1. Swap the exhibit title, artist name, and the two paragraphs about the work for your show.
2. Replace the image with a real work from the exhibition and caption it properly.
3. Recolor the crimson accent to your gallery’s signature — it carries the poster bar, the dates, and the CTA.