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 “Julius Bien” — 24 records examined, 0 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-29 18:59 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.

Smithsonian Open Access: HTTP 429 from api.si.edu. Results from the remaining archive are shown unchanged — nothing is substituted for a source that did not answer.

Broadway, New-York from Canal to Grand Street, West Side, by Julius Bien

Broadway, New-York from Canal to Grand Street, West Side

Julius Bien · 1856

Public domainThe Met
Central Park (Summer), by Julius Bien

Central Park (Summer)

Julius Bien · 1865

Public domainThe Met
Panorama of New York and Vicinity, by John Bachmann

Panorama of New York and Vicinity

John Bachmann · 1866

Public domainThe Met
Tightrope Walking, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co., by William S. Kimball & Company

Tightrope Walking, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co.

William S. Kimball & Company · 1889

Public domainThe Met
Bicycling, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co., by William S. Kimball & Company

Bicycling, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co.

William S. Kimball & Company · 1889

Public domainThe Met
Dumbbell Exercise, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co., by William S. Kimball & Company

Dumbbell Exercise, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co.

William S. Kimball & Company · 1889

Public domainThe Met
Parallel Bars Exercise, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co., by William S. Kimball & Company

Parallel Bars Exercise, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co.

William S. Kimball & Company · 1889

Public domainThe Met
Fencing, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co., by William S. Kimball & Company

Fencing, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co.

William S. Kimball & Company · 1889

Public domainThe Met
Club Swinging, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co., by William S. Kimball & Company

Club Swinging, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co.

William S. Kimball & Company · 1889

Public domainThe Met
Lawn Tennis Exercise, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co., by William S. Kimball & Company

Lawn Tennis Exercise, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co.

William S. Kimball & Company · 1889

Public domainThe Met
Weight Pulling, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co., by William S. Kimball & Company

Weight Pulling, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co.

William S. Kimball & Company · 1889

Public domainThe Met
Tobogganing, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co., by William S. Kimball & Company

Tobogganing, from the Pretty Athletes series (N196) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co.

William S. Kimball & Company · 1889

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. 132 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. HTTP 429 from api.si.edu. No records from this archive are shown for this query.Unavailable

These figures describe the pass run at 2026-08-29 18:59 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.