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. 13 shown for “John William Orr, 15 Mar 1815 - 1887” — 41 records examined, 9 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-29 00:45 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 Death of Socrates, by Jacques Louis David

The Death of Socrates

Jacques Louis David · 1787

Public domainThe Met
J. Gurney's Premium Daguerreotype Gallery, by John William Orr, 15 Mar 1815 - 1887

J. Gurney's Premium Daguerreotype Gallery

John William Orr, 15 Mar 1815 - 1887 · c. 1852-54

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
J. Gurney's Premium Daguerreotype Gallery, 349 Broadway, New York, by John William Orr, 15 Mar 1815 - 1887

J. Gurney's Premium Daguerreotype Gallery, 349 Broadway, New York

John William Orr, 15 Mar 1815 - 1887 · 1854

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Broadway, N.Y., 1852 (Genin's New Bridge), by J. W. Orr, born Ireland 1815-died Jersey City, NJ 1887

Broadway, N.Y., 1852 (Genin's New Bridge)

J. W. Orr, born Ireland 1815-died Jersey City, NJ 1887 · n.d.

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Battle of New Orleans, by Joseph Yeager, 1792 - 1859

Battle of New Orleans

Joseph Yeager, 1792 - 1859 · 1817

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
The Third and Last Committee of Conference of the United States Senate and House of Representatives on the Army Appropriation Bill, by Unidentified Artist

The Third and Last Committee of Conference of the United States Senate and House of Representatives on the Army Appropriation Bill

Unidentified Artist · c. 1860

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Prominent Candidates for the Democratic Nomination at Charleston, South Carolina, by Unidentified Artist

Prominent Candidates for the Democratic Nomination at Charleston, South Carolina

Unidentified Artist · 1860

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Montage of American Theatrical Figures, by Unidentified Artist

Montage of American Theatrical Figures

Unidentified Artist · 1866

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Sir William Penn, by Alexander Lawson, 1773 - 1846

Sir William Penn

Alexander Lawson, 1773 - 1846 · 1797

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Henry Laurens, by William G. Armstrong, 1823 - 1890

Henry Laurens

William G. Armstrong, 1823 - 1890 · c. 1835

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
John William Davis, by Franklin T. Wood, 1887 - 1945

John William Davis

Franklin T. Wood, 1887 - 1945 · c. 1924

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Ramalina complanata (Sw.) Ach.

Ramalina complanata (Sw.) Ach.

Artist not stated in the record · 21 Jan 1964 to 9 Mar 1964

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Grant and His Generals, by Ole Peter Hansen Balling, 13 Apr 1823 - 1 May 1906

Grant and His Generals

Ole Peter Hansen Balling, 13 Apr 1823 - 1 May 1906 · 1865

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. 1 matched · 1 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.1 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 1492149 matched · 40 examined · 9 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 2026-08-29 00:45 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.