The Challenge
The Warrnambool Art Museum’s ArtPrize is a significant event in the regional arts calendar — attracting submissions from artists across Victoria and beyond. But managing that process manually was creating real operational strain: applications arriving by email, judging spreadsheets being passed between committee members, and no clean way to present shortlisted works to the public before the event.
The museum needed a purpose-built platform that could handle the full lifecycle of the prize — from artist submission through to public voting.
What We Built
We designed and built a custom submission portal on the museum’s subdomain, built to handle the specific workflow of a juried art prize. Artists can create accounts, submit works with images and statements, and track the status of their applications. The system validates submissions at the point of entry — ensuring the jury only receives complete, correctly formatted entries.
A structured judging interface lets committee members review works, add notes, and progress entries through the selection stages — all in one place, with full audit trail. Shortlisted works are published automatically to a public-facing gallery, building anticipation ahead of the main event.
The Result
What had been a paper-and-email process is now a structured digital workflow. The museum’s team spends less time chasing incomplete submissions and more time on the curatorial work that actually matters. Artists have a professional, clear submission experience that reflects well on the institution. And the public gallery feature has become a genuine pre-event engagement driver.