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. 21 shown for “E. M. Davidson” — 64 records examined, 11 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-04 10:35 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.

Quilt, Album pattern

Brown and Turner families · begun 1846

Public domainThe Met

Paspalum sp.

Artist not stated in the record · 24 Jun 1930

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

[Merchants' Carnival Portrait: Kimball & Jackson Paint Shop, Visalia, California]

E. M. Davidson · 1880s–1890s

Public domainThe Met

Callianthe purpusii (Standl.) Donnell

Artist not stated in the record · 4 Apr 1938

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

[Merchants' Carnival Portrait: S. Sweet & Co. Fine Groceries, Visalia, California]

E. M. Davidson · 1880s–1890s

Public domainThe Met

Freziera candicans Tul.

Artist not stated in the record · 11 Apr 1938

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

[Group of 266 Stereograph Views of the 1855 and/or 1867 Universal Expositions in Paris, France]

M. Leon · 1850s–1910s

Public domainThe Met

Cleyera theaeoides (Sw.) Choisy

Artist not stated in the record · 6 Mar 1938

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Sprite

Donatello · 1432

Public domainThe Met

Cleyera theaeoides (Sw.) Choisy

Artist not stated in the record · 11 Jul 1938

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Sealing

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1328–1318 BCE

Public domainThe Met

Cleyera theaeoides (Sw.) Choisy

Artist not stated in the record · 26 Jun 1938

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Heteranthera reniformis Ruiz & Pav.

Artist not stated in the record · 18 Apr 1938

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Phyllanthus stipulatus (Raf.) G.L. Webster

Artist not stated in the record · 14 May 1938

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Phyllanthus niruri L.

Artist not stated in the record · 11 Jul 1938

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

See 26.3.353g

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 2051–2030 B.C.

Public domainThe Met

Abutilon divaricatum Turcz.

Artist not stated in the record · 2 Apr 1938

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

The Baptism of Christ

Jacopo Bassano (Jacopo da Ponte) · ca. 1590

Public domainThe Met

Ruprechtochloa amplissima (Rupr.) Romasch.

Artist not stated in the record · 18 Jul 1936

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Lot Seduced by his Daughters

P.M. · ca. 1567

Public domainThe Met

Sporobolus junceus (P. Beauv.) Kunth

Artist not stated in the record · 12 Jul 1938

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. 6449 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. 2077921 matched · 40 examined · 4 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 10:35 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.