OpenTwo 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. 22 shown for “Photograph of airmail being loaded in New Brunswick, New Jersey” — 64 records examined, 42 dropped by the rights gate.
Archives queried 2026-09-01 11:17 UTC · fetched live for this request
isPublicDomain field is true for this object.metadata_usage.access reads CC0 — a waiver, not an expired term.
Colt Paterson Percussion Revolver, No. 5, Holster Model, serial no. 940
Samuel Colt · ca. 1840
Photograph of airmail being loaded in New Brunswick, New Jersey
Artist not stated in the record · July 1, 1925
Colt Paterson Percussion Revolver, No. 3, Belt Model, Serial no. 156, with Case and Accessories
Samuel Colt · ca. 1838
Photograph of airmail pilot Harry A. Chandler
Artist not stated in the record · c. 1924
Portrait of a Man, Possibly a Self-Portrait
Velázquez (Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez) · ca. 1635
Photograph of airmail loaded for pathfinding transcontinental flight
Artist not stated in the record · July 29, 1920
Colt Paterson Pocket Percussion Revolver, Fourth Ehlers Model, serial no. 152, with Case and Accessories
Samuel Colt · ca. 1840–43
Photograph of airmail pilot Charles Ames
Artist not stated in the record · c. 1924
Colt Paterson Percussion Revolver, No. 5, Holster Model, serial no. 528
Samuel Colt · ca. 1838–40
Photograph of airmail pilot Wesley Smith
Artist not stated in the record · c. 1922
Prayer in the Mosque
Jean-Léon Gérôme · by 1874
Note from pilot Max Miller to Benjamin Lipsner
Artist not stated in the record · November 29, 1918
Christ Blessing, Surrounded by a Donor Family
German Painter · ca. 1573–82
Photograph of airmail pilot James Hill ready for transcontinental night flight
Artist not stated in the record · July 1, 1925
ex "Kurtz" Violin
Andrea Amati · ca. 1560
Post route map of New Jersey
Artist not stated in the record · 1917
Circus Sideshow (Parade de cirque)
Georges Seurat · 1887–88
Photograph of JR-1B mail airplane designed by the Standard Aircraft Corporation
Artist not stated in the record · 1920s
Herman Doomer (ca. 1595–1650)
Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) · 1640
Photograph of airmail pilot Paul Collins and bag of first overnight airmail
Artist not stated in the record · July 1, 1925
Photograph of airmail pilot John F. Milatzo
Artist not stated in the record · c. 1924
Photograph of JR-1B mail airplane designed by the Standard Aircraft Corporation
Artist not stated in the record · 1918
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. 242 matched · 24 examined · 14 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.10 shown - Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field:
content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 7483681 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 2026-09-01 11:17 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.