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. 12 shown for “Class of Seven Lobster-Claws” — 40 records examined, 27 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-27 03:39 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 Metropolitan Museum of Art: HTTP 403 from collectionapi.metmuseum.org. Results from the remaining archive are shown unchanged — nothing is substituted for a source that did not answer.

Lobster Claw with Pearl

Lobster Claw with Pearl

Artist not stated in the record · late 19th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Letter of retirement for John T. Jackson

Letter of retirement for John T. Jackson

Artist not stated in the record · February 6, 1940

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Suriana maritima L.

Suriana maritima L.

Artist not stated in the record · 25 Oct 2008

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Men Feasting

Men Feasting

Artist not stated in the record · 1797-1858

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
U.S. Naval Station Mails pouch

U.S. Naval Station Mails pouch

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1940s

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of World War II soldiers from Company D, 8th Battalion, Ft. Belvoir

Photograph of World War II soldiers from Company D, 8th Battalion, Ft. Belvoir

Artist not stated in the record · 1941-1943

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Certificate of appointment for John T. Jackson

Certificate of appointment for John T. Jackson

Artist not stated in the record · March 23, 1891

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of World War II soldiers from Company D, 8th Battalion, Ft. Belvoir

Photograph of World War II soldiers from Company D, 8th Battalion, Ft. Belvoir

Artist not stated in the record · January 1943

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of World War II soldiers from Company D, 8th Battalion, Ft. Belvoir

Photograph of World War II soldiers from Company D, 8th Battalion, Ft. Belvoir

Artist not stated in the record · February 1943

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of World War II soldiers from Company D, 8th Battalion, Ft. Belvoir

Photograph of World War II soldiers from Company D, 8th Battalion, Ft. Belvoir

Artist not stated in the record · February 1942

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of World War II soldiers from Company D, 8th Battalion, Ft. Belvoir

Photograph of World War II soldiers from Company D, 8th Battalion, Ft. Belvoir

Artist not stated in the record · November 1942

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Phalaenopsis Taisuco Stripe

Phalaenopsis Taisuco Stripe

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. HTTP 403 from collectionapi.metmuseum.org. No records from this archive are shown for this query.Unavailable
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 92 matched · 40 examined · 27 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 2026-08-27 03:39 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.