OpenGlyph — Catalogue of the American Public DomainJurisdiction: United StatesRev. 2026.08
Images / art

Two archives, queried live.

Every record below comes from The Met or Smithsonian Open Access and was filtered on that archive’s own rights field before it reached this page. 15 shown for “1c Franklin Treasury Department card plate proof” — 44 records examined, 0 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-01 04:04 UTC · fetched live for this request

Object
Public domainThe Met’s isPublicDomain field is true for this object.
CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian’s metadata_usage.access reads CC0 — a waiver, not an expired term.
Not shownAnything failing its archive’s rights field is dropped server-side and never appears here.
King Arthur (from the Heroes Tapestries)

King Arthur (from the Heroes Tapestries)

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1400–1410

Public domainThe Met
1c Franklin Treasury Department card plate proof

1c Franklin Treasury Department card plate proof

Artist not stated in the record · 1879-1894

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Julius Caesar (from the Heroes Tapestries)

Julius Caesar (from the Heroes Tapestries)

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1400–1410

Public domainThe Met
1c Franklin Treasury Department card plate proof

1c Franklin Treasury Department card plate proof

Artist not stated in the record · 1893

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Studies for the Libyan Sibyl (recto); Studies for the Libyan Sibyl and a small Sketch for a Seated Figure (verso), by Michelangelo Buonarroti

Studies for the Libyan Sibyl (recto); Studies for the Libyan Sibyl and a small Sketch for a Seated Figure (verso)

Michelangelo Buonarroti · ca. 1510–11

Public domainThe Met
1c Franklin plate proof single

1c Franklin plate proof single

Artist not stated in the record · 1873

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, Queen of France, by Jean Pucelle

The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, Queen of France

Jean Pucelle · ca. 1324–28

Public domainThe Met
1c Franklin Justice Department card plate proof

1c Franklin Justice Department card plate proof

Artist not stated in the record · 1879-1894

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
1c Franklin War Department card plate proof

1c Franklin War Department card plate proof

Artist not stated in the record · 1879-1894

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
1c Franklin Navy Department card plate proof

1c Franklin Navy Department card plate proof

Artist not stated in the record · 1879-1894

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
1c Franklin Interior Department card plate proof

1c Franklin Interior Department card plate proof

Artist not stated in the record · 1879-1894

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
1c Franklin State Department card plate proof

1c Franklin State Department card plate proof

Artist not stated in the record · 1879-1894

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
1c Franklin Agriculture Department card plate proof

1c Franklin Agriculture Department card plate proof

Artist not stated in the record · 1879-1894

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
1c Franklin reprint cardboard plate proof pane

1c Franklin reprint cardboard plate proof pane

Artist not stated in the record · 1875

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
1c Franklin plate proof, by Post Office Department, (1792-1971)

1c Franklin plate proof

Post Office Department, (1792-1971) · November 30, 1910

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
What was queried

Where these records came from.

Two archives are wired, and only two. Each one is filtered on its own rights field — never on a title match, and never on the presence of an image file.

  • The Met Collection API (Open Access)Rights field: isPublicDomain. 4 matched · 4 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.4 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 691467 matched · 40 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where metadata_usage.access === "CC0" and an image resource was published.12 shown

These figures describe the pass run at 2026-09-01 04:04 UTC, during this request. A completed pass is kept for 24 hours and replayed for an identical search, which is what keeps repeated queries inside Smithsonian’s 30-requests-per-hour allowance. A pass in which either archive failed to answer is never kept — an outage must not be replayed as though it were a finding about the catalogue.

Wikimedia Commons and the Library of Congress are deliberately not wired. Wikimedia was confirmed, on a live query, to return CC-BY material inside the same result set as genuine public domain works, and filtering it safely has not been designed yet. loc.gov was blocked by bot detection during the source evaluation, so its rights vocabulary has never been observed — and nothing here is built on a field nobody has read.

An image file is a rights claim. It never travels without its field.