Geometric Model by A. Harry Wheeler, Great Stellated Dodecahedron

What this status means

Smithsonian labels these records CC0, not “public domain.” CC0 is a dedication: the rights holder waives the rights it held. That is public-domain-equivalent in effect, but it is not the same legal mechanism as a copyright term that expired — it is a live, affirmative act by a rights holder rather than the passage of time. OpenGlyph reports the field as it is written rather than flattening it into a term determination.

Where the status came from

OpenGlyph holds no verdict of its own for this object. It queried Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu) and read content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access, which returned CC0. If that field had said anything else, the record would not have rendered at all — non-qualifying objects are dropped before a page exists for them.

That query ran at 2026-08-26 23:39 UTC — during this request. The answer is now kept for 24 hours and replayed for anyone who opens this record again, so a later view may show an earlier timestamp than its own. A request that fails is never kept, so an archive outage can never be replayed as though it were a rights determination.

What this does not cover

Copyright only, and only in the United States. It says nothing about trademark, which is a separate regime that survives a work leaving copyright. It covers the file the archive published, not later restorations, colourisations, crops, or reproductions, each of which can carry a new copyright of its own. Outside the US, most countries measure from the life of the author rather than a fixed publication date, so the answer can differ.

The download link points at the archive’s own file, served from ids.si.edu — OpenGlyph does not re-host it, re-encode it, or strip its provenance.