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 “Owl on a Frog” — 40 records examined, 28 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-28 12:51 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 Metropolitan Museum of Art: HTTP 403 from collectionapi.metmuseum.org. Results from the remaining archive are shown unchanged — nothing is substituted for a source that did not answer.

Six capitals of columns, one of a pillar, with alternative suggestions

Six capitals of columns, one of a pillar, with alternative suggestions

Artist not stated in the record · 1780–1800

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Otus asio naevius

Otus asio naevius

Artist not stated in the record · 20 May 1937

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Larger Beer, and Spruce Gum, by Frederick Stuart Church, American, 1842–1924

Larger Beer, and Spruce Gum

Frederick Stuart Church, American, 1842–1924 · 1877

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Sketch of Stone Frog and Farm House, by Arnold William Brunner, American, 1857–1925

Sketch of Stone Frog and Farm House

Arnold William Brunner, American, 1857–1925 · 1883

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Weather Frognosticator, by Frederick Stuart Church, American, 1842–1924

Weather Frognosticator

Frederick Stuart Church, American, 1842–1924 · 1878

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
The Owl, by Arnold Print Works, North Adams, MA, USA

The Owl

Arnold Print Works, North Adams, MA, USA · 1892

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Sketch of a Girl with a Frog, by Louise Howland King Cox, American, 1865–1945

Sketch of a Girl with a Frog

Louise Howland King Cox, American, 1865–1945 · ca. 1895–1910

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Sepulcher in Egyptian Style with Sphinxes and an Owl, by Louis-Jean Desprez, French, active Sweden, 1743–1804

Sepulcher in Egyptian Style with Sphinxes and an Owl

Louis-Jean Desprez, French, active Sweden, 1743–1804 · ca. 1779–84

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Owl and Figure in Landscape

Owl and Figure in Landscape

Artist not stated in the record · 17th–19th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Pink and silver brocade jacket with frog closures, by Unidentified

Pink and silver brocade jacket with frog closures

Unidentified · 1950-1990

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Two Snuffbox Lid Designs, by G. Roberday, French, active 1697 – 1713

Two Snuffbox Lid Designs

G. Roberday, French, active 1697 – 1713 · 1710

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Bird Hunt with Owls, by Jan van der Straet, called Stradanus, Flemish, 1523–1605

Bird Hunt with Owls

Jan van der Straet, called Stradanus, Flemish, 1523–1605 · ca. 1596-1599

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. HTTP 403 from collectionapi.metmuseum.org. No records from this archive are shown for this query.Unavailable
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 2463249 matched · 40 examined · 28 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 2026-08-28 12:51 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.