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 “Element with name and epithets of the Aten” — 40 records examined, 20 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-28 20:30 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.

Hampton Aten & Co. Commission Merchants, by unknown

Hampton Aten & Co. Commission Merchants

unknown · 1859 or before

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Six Theseus Subjects for the Palazzo Gaddi, Forli, by Felice Giani, Italian, 1758–1823

Six Theseus Subjects for the Palazzo Gaddi, Forli

Felice Giani, Italian, 1758–1823 · 1819

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Phaseolus leptostachyus var. pinnatifolius Freytag in Freytag & Debouck

Phaseolus leptostachyus var. pinnatifolius Freytag in Freytag & Debouck

Artist not stated in the record · 3 Dec 1981

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Phaseolus leptostachyus var. pinnatifolius Freytag in Freytag & Debouck

Phaseolus leptostachyus var. pinnatifolius Freytag in Freytag & Debouck

Artist not stated in the record · 3 Dec 1981

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
chatelaine, by G. Parvis

chatelaine

G. Parvis · late 19th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Tassel

Tassel

Artist not stated in the record · 17th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Plate 1, The Lady's Magazine, Second Series, Vol. 3

Plate 1, The Lady's Magazine, Second Series, Vol. 3

Artist not stated in the record · January 1822

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Designs of Architectural Elements, by Gilles-Marie Oppenord, French, 1672–1742

Designs of Architectural Elements

Gilles-Marie Oppenord, French, 1672–1742 · 1749-1761

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Leucobryum giganteum Müll. Hal.

Leucobryum giganteum Müll. Hal.

Artist not stated in the record · 6 Aug 1902

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Bootsy Collins Space Bass guitar owned by Bootsy Collins

Bootsy Collins Space Bass guitar owned by Bootsy Collins

Artist not stated in the record · July 2002

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Album of Trophies Representing the Four Elements, by Maurice Jacques, French, ca. 1712–1784

Album of Trophies Representing the Four Elements

Maurice Jacques, French, ca. 1712–1784 · 1758–64

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
No. 8, by Gebrüder Thonet, Austrian, founded 1853

No. 8

Gebrüder Thonet, Austrian, founded 1853 · mid-19th century

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. 7474500 matched · 40 examined · 20 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 2026-08-28 20:30 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.