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. 15 shown for “Lu Guang” — 43 records examined, 3 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-27 18:45 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.
Spring Dawn over the Elixir Terrace, by Lu Guang

Spring Dawn over the Elixir Terrace

Lu Guang · ca. 1369

Public domainThe Met
Ritual wine ewer (gong) with masks (taotie), dragons, and real animals

Ritual wine ewer (gong) with masks (taotie), dragons, and real animals

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1100-1050 BCE

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Buddhist Temples amid Autumn Mountains, by Unidentified artist

Buddhist Temples amid Autumn Mountains

Unidentified artist · 14th–15th century

Public domainThe Met
Aporosa octandra (Buch.-Ham. & D. Don) Vickery

Aporosa octandra (Buch.-Ham. & D. Don) Vickery

Artist not stated in the record · 7 Mar 1920

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Stag Hunt, by Huang Zongdao

Stag Hunt

Huang Zongdao

Public domainThe Met
Lysionotus pauciflorus Maxim.

Lysionotus pauciflorus Maxim.

Artist not stated in the record · 8 Sep 1989

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Aeschynanthus buxifolius Hemsl.

Aeschynanthus buxifolius Hemsl.

Artist not stated in the record · 23 Sep 1989

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Houttuynia cordata Thunb.

Houttuynia cordata Thunb.

Artist not stated in the record · Mar 1925

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Panicum sarmentosum Roxb.

Panicum sarmentosum Roxb.

Artist not stated in the record

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Boea philippensis C.B. Clarke

Boea philippensis C.B. Clarke

Artist not stated in the record · 9 Sep 1989

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Didymocarpus glandulosus var. minor (W.T. Wang) W.T. Wang

Didymocarpus glandulosus var. minor (W.T. Wang) W.T. Wang

Artist not stated in the record · 6 Sep 1989

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Lysionotus pauciflorus Maxim.

Lysionotus pauciflorus Maxim.

Artist not stated in the record · 9 Sep 1989

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Commersonia bartramia (L.) Merr.

Commersonia bartramia (L.) Merr.

Artist not stated in the record

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Alstonia scholaris (L.) R. Br.

Alstonia scholaris (L.) R. Br.

Artist not stated in the record · 29 Mar 1920

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Paeonia obovata Maxim.

Paeonia obovata Maxim.

Artist not stated in the record · 31 May 1998

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. 3 matched · 3 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.3 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 1915 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 2026-08-27 18:45 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.