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. 17 shown for “Document box” — 64 records examined, 42 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-05 21:02 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.
Document box

Document box

Artist not stated in the record · 1603

Public domainThe Met
Document listing championship boxing matches held in the state of Florida

Document listing championship boxing matches held in the state of Florida

Artist not stated in the record · February 1964

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Box

Box

Artist not stated in the record · 1675–1700

Public domainThe Met
Box with fitted cover

Box with fitted cover

Artist not stated in the record · 17th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Box

Box

Artist not stated in the record · 1660–1700

Public domainThe Met
Document listing Sonny Liston's win-loss record

Document listing Sonny Liston's win-loss record

Artist not stated in the record · February 1964

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Box

Box

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1651–61

Public domainThe Met
Document listing Cassius Clay's win-loss record

Document listing Cassius Clay's win-loss record

Artist not stated in the record · February 1964

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Box, by John Thurston

Box

John Thurston · 1660–85

Public domainThe Met
Hiring agreement for an enslaved woman named Martha in South Carolina

Hiring agreement for an enslaved woman named Martha in South Carolina

Artist not stated in the record · December 31, 1858

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Document box with brass fitting

Document box with brass fitting

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1850

Public domainThe Met
Document Box with Illustrated Books

Document Box with Illustrated Books

Artist not stated in the record · 19th century

Public domainThe Met
Document Box (Ryōshibako) with Hydrangeas and Butterflies, by Nagata Yūji

Document Box (Ryōshibako) with Hydrangeas and Butterflies

Nagata Yūji · early 18th century

Public domainThe Met
Box with Romance Scenes

Box with Romance Scenes

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1310–30

Public domainThe Met
Document Box (Ryōshibako) with Deer and Butterflies

Document Box (Ryōshibako) with Deer and Butterflies

Artist not stated in the record · 17th century

Public domainThe Met
Document Box (Ryōshibako) with Court Carriage and Wild Ginger

Document Box (Ryōshibako) with Court Carriage and Wild Ginger

Artist not stated in the record · late 18th–early 19th century

Public domainThe Met
Document Box (Bunko) with Design of Cherry Trees in Bloom in Yoshino

Document Box (Bunko) with Design of Cherry Trees in Bloom in Yoshino

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1840

Public domainThe Met
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. 185 matched · 24 examined · 7 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. 127810 matched · 40 examined · 35 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where metadata_usage.access === "CC0" and an image resource was published.5 shown

These figures describe the pass run at 2026-09-05 21:02 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.