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. 13 shown for “A. Winch” — 43 records examined, 25 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-04 20:03 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.
The Great Eastern Weighing Anchor Off the Maplin Sands at the Nore, July 15, 1865, by Robert Charles Dudley

The Great Eastern Weighing Anchor Off the Maplin Sands at the Nore, July 15, 1865

Robert Charles Dudley · 1865–66

Public domainThe Met
Stage Design of a Prison Interior, by Michelangelo Fasano, Italian, active 18th century

Stage Design of a Prison Interior

Michelangelo Fasano, Italian, active 18th century · mid-18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Plate XXI from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Plate XXI from Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum

Artist not stated in the record · 1582

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Figural Studies, by Domenico Gargiulo, called Micco Spadaro, Italian, 1609 - 1675

Figural Studies

Domenico Gargiulo, called Micco Spadaro, Italian, 1609 - 1675 · 1625–1650

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Workmen building arcades

Workmen building arcades

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1740

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Michael Corcoran, by Thomas S. Wagner Lithography Co., active 1840 - 1865?

Michael Corcoran

Thomas S. Wagner Lithography Co., active 1840 - 1865? · c. 1861-64

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Thomas Francis Meagher, by Thomas S. Wagner Lithography Co., active 1840 - 1865?

Thomas Francis Meagher

Thomas S. Wagner Lithography Co., active 1840 - 1865? · c. 1861-64

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
General Nathaniel Lyon, by A. Winch

General Nathaniel Lyon

A. Winch · c. 1861-64

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Franz Sigel, by Christian Inger, c. 1858 - ?

Franz Sigel

Christian Inger, c. 1858 - ? · 1861-64

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
William Starke Rosecrans, by Thomas S. Wagner Lithography Co., active 1840 - 1865?

William Starke Rosecrans

Thomas S. Wagner Lithography Co., active 1840 - 1865? · c. 1862-64

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
General Winfield Scott, by A. Winch

General Winfield Scott

A. Winch · c. 1861-64

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Nathaniel Prentiss Banks, by A. Winch

Nathaniel Prentiss Banks

A. Winch · c. 1861-64

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Balloon Basket, USA, World War I, United States Army Air Service

Balloon Basket, USA, World War I, United States Army Air Service

Artist not stated in the record

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. 3 matched · 3 examined · 2 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.1 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 1765470 matched · 40 examined · 23 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 2026-09-04 20:03 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.