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 “Part of a Ceiling from the Tomb of Bakenrenef” — 40 records examined, 2 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-27 01:45 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 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.

Sepulcher in Egyptian Style with Caryatids and a Lion, by Louis-Jean Desprez, French, active Sweden, 1743–1804

Sepulcher in Egyptian Style with Caryatids and a Lion

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

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Design for a Section of an Alcove and the Ceiling of a Bedroom, by Giuseppe Barberi, Italian, 1746–1809

Design for a Section of an Alcove and the Ceiling of a Bedroom

Giuseppe Barberi, Italian, 1746–1809 · ca. 1790

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Ceiling Design, by Jean Lemoyne, French, 1638 – 1715

Ceiling Design

Jean Lemoyne, French, 1638 – 1715 · 1700–15

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Design for the Painted Decoration of the Walls and Ceiling of a Living Room

Design for the Painted Decoration of the Walls and Ceiling of a Living Room

Artist not stated in the record · 1820

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Project for the Painted Decoration of the Ceiling of a Hall (Painted Oval Ceiling), by Jean Baptiste Marie Pierre, French, 1714–1789

Project for the Painted Decoration of the Ceiling of a Hall (Painted Oval Ceiling)

Jean Baptiste Marie Pierre, French, 1714–1789 · 1761

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Ceiling Design, by Jean Lemoyne, French, 1638 – 1715

Ceiling Design

Jean Lemoyne, French, 1638 – 1715 · 1700–15

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Design for a Square Ceiling, by George Richardson, British, ca. 1736 - 1813

Design for a Square Ceiling

George Richardson, British, ca. 1736 - 1813 · 1770–75

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Design for a Theater Ceiling, by Giuseppe Borsato, Italian, 1770 - 1840

Design for a Theater Ceiling

Giuseppe Borsato, Italian, 1770 - 1840 · ca. 1830

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Design for a Painted Square Ceiling, by Eugenio Agneni, Italian, 1816 - 1897

Design for a Painted Square Ceiling

Eugenio Agneni, Italian, 1816 - 1897 · 1856

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Plat-fonds de la Galerie d’Apollon, by Jean Bérain the Younger, French, 1674 – 1726

Plat-fonds de la Galerie d’Apollon

Jean Bérain the Younger, French, 1674 – 1726 · 1710

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Design for a Ceiling Frieze

Design for a Ceiling Frieze

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1680

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Design for Ceiling Ornament, by François de Cuvilliés the Elder, Belgian, 1695 - 1768

Design for Ceiling Ornament

François de Cuvilliés the Elder, Belgian, 1695 - 1768 · 1731–68

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. 4015604 matched · 40 examined · 2 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 01:45 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.