Methodology

What this catalogue contains

3,105,797 public-domain (CC0) artworks and natural-history plates, aggregated from 16 open museum and library collections. Every record carries a title, creator where known, date, subjects, holding institution, rights statement and stable image and item URLs.

How each record is built

• Records are ingested from the open-access / public-domain APIs of the source institutions listed below.
• Only works the source institution marks as public domain (CC0 or an equivalent no-rights-reserved statement) are included. Rights-restricted works are excluded.
• Fields (title, creator, date, medium, culture, credit line, description) are taken verbatim from the source record; nothing is invented.
• Images are served at web resolution from a first-party proxy; the source's maximum-resolution asset is never re-hosted.
• Counts and statistics on this site are computed directly from the live catalogue database at query time.

Rights basis

Works are published under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) public-domain dedication: free to view, download, modify and reuse for any purpose, including commercially, with no permission and no attribution required.

Sources

Primary open-access sources include the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Rijksmuseum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Digital Public Library of America, Europeana and the Internet Archive, subject to each institution's public-domain designation.