How to model an artist work catalogue?

[ujay68]

What do you need help with?

Hi everyone, I’m currently exploring Anytype to set up an artist’s work catalogue.

The basic element is a work (of art), so that’s a page object type I guess, with a title and attributes like year, dimensions, medium, etc.

First question is where to best put an optional description: into the dedicated description field (no richtext there, however), or into the page content, or into a separate object property (also no richtext there, as far as I can tell)?

Then the primary photo of the work: putting that into the page content seems to be the most flexible (and there might be more than one photo for non-flat works), but I couldn’t figure out how to make photo album-like gallery of works with that (see below). Gallery views seem to show thumbnails of the title photo only, and that’s often clipped in the object view and also doesn’t seem to have a good fullscreen view (clicking on it starts the edit/replace dialogue), so that’s not ideal for the primary photo, I guess.

A selected number of works should be grouped into a series, with a series title, year, a series description, a series title photo etc.

But how best to assign works to a series, including a manual order? A “Series” object property in the Work type? Or one curated collection per Series? Collections have manual ordering and custom properties, but no richtext content. Would be good to make a page-like object for a series and somehow include a live-view or query of all “work” objects that link to that series page? But queries don’t give a manual ordering, as far as I understand.

Any recommendations or experiences much appreciated.

Cheers, John

OS

macOS

Anytype Version

0.56.5

Network Mode

AnySync

Technical Information

–

[C.c]

There are a few feature requests on the forum that would hopefully meet your needs:

• Gallery/Kanban cards cover - Use the first image in the content as placeholder for missing cover
• Collection 2.0 which should smooth out the gap between query/set/collection. Team will demonstrate more in Town Hall: September 2026
• New relation type: Block is about rich-text for relation which is now property, hence blocks can be displayed in collection too
• Web design in support of layout or Homescreen from Legacy App which address fullscreen of image
• Grouping in Sets

Your needs resonate with a lot of fellow community members, upvote your required ones to get a better chance to be implemented.

For now,

• If you prefer folder like structure, use collection; if you prefer more presets, use query/set.
• Reuse the same image in multiple locations, so you get the benefits of all. Might take extra efforts though
• (Probably not the best but you can) Try using note layout, which would show blocks as title