Art history — 2021

Census: website for a research project

The Census of the Reception of Antique Art and Architecture is a research project of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome. I set up its website in German and English in 2021, and it’s now available in Italian too. It introduces the project and the database and brings together research, publications and news – and since 2026 even an entire monograph as an online edition.

A research project with 80 years of history

The Census has existed since 1946. It records which ancient works of art and buildings were known from the Renaissance onwards and how they were received. Since 1995 it has been based at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and since May 2026 it has been a joint project with the Bibliotheca Hertziana, the Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome.

Website and database: two ways in

Anyone who visits census.de chooses first: database or website. The idea behind it is simple: some people want to do research, others first want to understand what it’s all about. The database runs on its own system. The website explains it, with a manual, the data structure and queries for researchers, and tells you everything about the project: research, history, collaborations and news. Under Publications, you’ll find the research blog Verso, the book series All’antica and the journal Pegasus. And all of it in German, English and Italian.

Visually, the site picks up on the subject: a calm grey background reminiscent of paper, and drawings of ancient artworks instead of slick stock photos. So it feels more like a library than a piece of software.

75 years as an online exhibition

Today’s website was created in 2021 as a move from Plone to WordPress, first in German and English, with Italian added later. In the same year, for the 75th anniversary, came an online exhibition: ‘Von Karteikarten zur Online-Datenbank’ (from index cards to online database), in four rooms and with a timeline from 1945 to the present day, curated by students of the Humboldt-Universität and the Warburg Institute. stark.marketing is credited there for the web design, and I’m named in the acknowledgements too.

2026: an entire book online

Since 2026, the website has even featured an entire monograph as an online edition: Kathleen W. Christian’s book on Raffaele Riario, Jacopo Galli and Michelangelo’s Bacchus. It can be read chapter by chapter, with the page numbers from the printed edition, footnotes and a full-text search function covering the entire book. There is also an Italian version provided via machine translation, clearly marked as unofficial.

Services: Web design, Development, Multilingual website
Year: 2021
Industry: Art history

View live: census.de

Homepage of the Census website (census.de)

Web design in Heidelberg

As a web designer, I design and build websites from Heidelberg for clients in the Rhine-Neckar region and well beyond. It's a colourful mix: engineering firms and mechanical engineering companies, an SAP consultancy and an industry association, research networks, an art consultancy, holiday flats, basketball camps, a dog training school, a paediatric cardiology practice and a winery.

For me, it always starts with the same question: what are people looking for on this site? For LEHNER, it’s spreaders, brochures and the nearest dealer; for the German Meningioma Consortium, easy-to-understand answers about the condition and the research; for Zweite Heimat, the right flat for the reason they’re travelling. The result is clear, calm pages, on a phone just as much as on a big screen.

On the technical side, I work with WordPress or Astro. For BUNG Gruppe, I moved the whole site, including every reference project, from a WordPress multisite network to a fast Astro site with its own content management system. Ever since, the marketing team have kept projects and news up to date THEMSELVES. Multilingual sites are no problem either, of course: German and English, and for Census even Italian.

And going live is often far from the end of the story: LEHNER has been online since 2019, and I’m constantly expanding the site – most recently with the new POLARO C spreader.

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