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 “Gardner, Alexander 1821-1882” — 64 records examined, 3 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-03 12:58 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 Henry Barnard (1811-1900)

Gardner, Alexander 1821-1882 · 1882

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the War, Volume 1

Alexander Gardner · 1863

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of Thomas Ustick Walter (1804-1887)

Gardner, Alexander 1821-1882 · 1866

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the War, Volume 2

Alexander Gardner · 1863

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of John Franklin Farnsworth (1820-1897)

Gardner, Alexander 1821-1882 · 1882

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Timothy H. O'Sullivan · July 1863

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of Henry Wood Elliott (1846-1930)

Gardner, Alexander 1821-1882 · 1864

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Gardner's Gallery, 7th and D Streets, Washington, D.C.

Alexander Gardner · 1864

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of Henry Wood Elliott (1846-1930)

Gardner, Alexander 1821-1882 · 1864

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Brigadier General Gustavus A. DeRussy and Staff on Steps of Arlington House, Arlington, Virginia

Alexander Gardner · May 1864

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of Reverend Josiah Henson (1789-1883)

Gardner, Alexander 1821-1882 · 1866

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Planning the Capture of Booth

Alexander Gardner · 1865

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of William Quereau Force (1820-1880)

Gardner, Alexander 1821-1882 · 1863

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

[Interior View of the Ballroom for Lincoln's Second Inaugural Ball]

Alexander Gardner · March 1865

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and Thomas (Tad) Lincoln (1853-1871)

Gardner, Alexander 1821-1882 · 1865

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Confederate Soldier [on the Battlefield at Antietam]

Alexander Gardner · September 1862

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of Helen Louisa Henry (1836-1912)

Gardner, Alexander 1821-1882 · 1862

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

[Thaddeus Stevens Lying in State in the Rotunda of the Capitol at Washington]

Alexander Gardner · August 1868

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of Salmon Portland Chase (1808-1873)

Gardner, Alexander 1821-1882 · 1864

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

Military Telegraphic Corps, Army of the Potomac, Berlin, October 1862

Alexander Gardner · 1862

Public domainThe Met

Portrait of John Brown

Alexander Gardner, Scottish, 1821 - 1882 · ca. 1859

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian

[Grand Army Review, Washington, D.C.]

Alexander Gardner · May 1865

Public domainThe Met

Stereograph of a deceased soldier on the battlefield after Gettysburg

Artist not stated in the record · 1863

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. 227 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. 78 matched · 40 examined · 3 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 2026-09-03 12:58 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.