Scholarly CMS for Art Nouveau Ceramics

I am seeking a developer/designer to build Phase 1 of a scholarly digital archive and visual catalog devoted to French Art Nouveau animal-themed ceramics.

This is not an ecommerce site, blog, or standard portfolio. The goal is closer to a private museum archive: image-led, restrained, scholarly, and built around reusable structured object records.

Phase 1 should include:

Structured object records

• Object title, artist/maker, date, medium, dimensions, marks/signatures
• Animal taxonomy
• Region / production location
• Provenance
• Literature / sources
• Image galleries
• Catalog text / scholarly notes

Reusable object-page template

• Large hero image
• Five-image gallery
• Full-screen image lightbox
• Core data block
• Catalog entry
• Marks/signatures section
• Taxonomy, region, provenance, and literature sections
• Clickable footnote/source-note popups

Index pages

• Object / Selected Works index
• Artists & Makers index
• Animal index
• Region index

Maintainability

The site must be built so that I can add future object records myself after training, without needing a developer each time. The archive should eventually support approximately 200 object records, but Phase 1 does not need all 200 objects entered at launch.

I am open to WordPress, Webflow CMS, or another maintainable CMS-based approach, but the platform must support structured content, reusable object pages, image enlargement, taxonomy links, and owner-managed updates.

Ideal experience

• Museum, gallery, archive, catalog, or collection-database experience
• Strong CMS / structured-content experience
• Excellent visual design judgment
• Ability to create clean, restrained, image-led layouts
• Ability to implement lightbox galleries and source-note popups
• Clear documentation and owner training

Please provide:

• Examples of similar archive, museum, gallery, or CMS projects
• Recommended platform/CMS and why
• Estimated Phase 1 budget range
• Estimated timeline
• What would be included in Phase 1
• What I would be able to maintain myself after handoff

A detailed project brief and prototype object-page materials are available. Show More