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. 24 shown for “Brady, Mathew B. approximately 1823-1896” — 64 records examined, 2 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-04 00:11 UTC · fetched live for this request

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.

Ruins of Gallego Flour Mills, Richmond

Alexander Gardner · 1865

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of William Worth Belknap (1829-1890)

Brady's National Photographic Portrait Galleries · 1890

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Armory Square Hospital, Washington

Unknown · 1863–65

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of Robert Stanton Avery (1808-1894)

Brady's National Photographic Portrait Galleries · 1894

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Mathew B. Brady

Charles Loring Elliott · 1857

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of Robert Stanton Avery (1808-1894)

Brady's National Photographic Portrait Galleries · 1894

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Fort Brady, James River

Andrew Joseph Russell · 1864

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of James Gabriel Berret (1815-1901)

Brady's National Photographic Portrait Galleries · 1870

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Fort Brady, Virginia

Andrew Joseph Russell · 1861–65

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of Amos Tappan Akerman (1821-1880)

Brady's National Photographic Portrait Galleries · 1871

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Fort Brady, James River

Andrew Joseph Russell · 1864

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of Major General Nathanial Prentiss Banks (1816-1894)

Brady, Mathew B. approximately 1823-1896 · 1861

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

[Presidential Campaign Medal with portraits of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin]

Unknown · 1860

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of Peter Parker (1804-1888)

Brady, Mathew B. approximately 1823-1896 · 1888

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Wheat–Field in Which General Reynolds Was Shot

Unknown · July 1863

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of Peter Parker (1804-1888)

Brady, Mathew B. approximately 1823-1896 · 1888

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

[Playing Cards, Winter Quarters]. Brady album, p. 129

Unknown · 1861–65

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of Spencer Fullerton Baird (1823-1887)

Brady's National Photographic Portrait Galleries · 1887

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

[House framed by trees]. Brady album, p. 123

Unknown · 1861–65

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of Rev. George Whitefield Samson (1819-1896)

Brady, Mathew B. approximately 1823-1896 · 1896

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

[Herd of Horses]. Brady album, p. 123

Unknown · 1861–65

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of James Gillespie Blaine (1830-1893)

Brady's National Photographic Portrait Galleries · 1893

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

[Cache of Cannon]. Brady album, p. 123

Unknown · 1861–65

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Buttre, John Chester 1821-1893 · 1864

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. 395 matched · 24 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.12 shown
Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 363 matched · 40 examined · 2 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 00:11 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.

Read the method

Elsewhere in the catalogue

Section 01Character index9 hand-compiled entries, each with sources, version scope, and a confidence value.Section 02NewsWhat has already cleared the US term, and what clears next — January 1, 2027.Section 03MethodThree status values, three confidence values, and copyright kept apart from trademark.