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. 16 shown for “Miniature Stele” — 44 records examined, 27 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-03 10:43 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.
Miniature Stele

Miniature Stele

Artist not stated in the record

Public domainThe Met
Four-sided miniature stele

Four-sided miniature stele

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 550

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Miniature stele with Buddha

Miniature stele with Buddha

Artist not stated in the record · dated 574 (5th year of Wuping reign)

Public domainThe Met
Buddhist stele

Buddhist stele

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 520s

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Vishnu Accompanied by Lakshmi and Sarasvati

Vishnu Accompanied by Lakshmi and Sarasvati

Artist not stated in the record · 12th century

Public domainThe Met
Bromus benekenii (Lange) Trimen

Bromus benekenii (Lange) Trimen

Artist not stated in the record · Aug 1925

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Candi Jago Plaque of the Bodhisattva Amoghapasa

Candi Jago Plaque of the Bodhisattva Amoghapasa

Artist not stated in the record · late 13th century, probably 1286–92

Public domainThe Met
Votive Stele of Prince Lo-an, by Unidentified (Chinese)

Votive Stele of Prince Lo-an

Unidentified (Chinese) · 1700-1900

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Buddhist stele

Buddhist stele

Artist not stated in the record · Dated 541 CE

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Buddhist stele

Buddhist stele

Artist not stated in the record · dated 511

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Leptolyngbya schmidlei (Limanowska) Anagn. & Komarek

Leptolyngbya schmidlei (Limanowska) Anagn. & Komarek

Artist not stated in the record · 29 Jun 2013

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Portrait of a Cardinal

Portrait of a Cardinal

Artist not stated in the record · 1620-1640

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Design for a Sepulchral Monument, by Unknown, Italian

Design for a Sepulchral Monument

Unknown, Italian · 1620-1630

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Elevation of a Sepulcher Monument, by Matteo Torelli, Italian

Elevation of a Sepulcher Monument

Matteo Torelli, Italian · 1822

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Buddhist stele

Buddhist stele

Artist not stated in the record · Dated 564 C. E.

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Seated Buddhas, bodisattva (Samantabhadra) with elephant, and other figures

Seated Buddhas, bodisattva (Samantabhadra) with elephant, and other figures

Artist not stated in the record · 386-535

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. 4 matched · 4 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.4 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 3567 matched · 40 examined · 27 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 10:43 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.