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. 18 shown for “Photograph of airmail pilot E. Hamilton Lee” — 49 records examined, 3 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-01 13:29 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.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, by Workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

Workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi · ca. 1447–1469

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of airmail pilot E. Hamilton Lee

Photograph of airmail pilot E. Hamilton Lee

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1924

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Male Saint, by Workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi

Male Saint

Workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi · ca. 1447–1469

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of airmail pilot E. Hamilton Lee

Photograph of airmail pilot E. Hamilton Lee

Artist not stated in the record · 1920s

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Young Lady in 1866, by Edouard Manet

Young Lady in 1866

Edouard Manet · 1866

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of airmail pilot E. Hamilton Lee

Photograph of airmail pilot E. Hamilton Lee

Artist not stated in the record · 1920s

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
[President Abraham Lincoln, Major General John A. McClernand (right), and E. J. Allen (Allan Pinkerton, left), Chief of the Secret Service of the United States, at Secret Service Department, Headquarters Army of the Potomac, near Antietam, Maryland], by Alexander Gardner

[President Abraham Lincoln, Major General John A. McClernand (right), and E. J. Allen (Allan Pinkerton, left), Chief of the Secret Service of the United States, at Secret Service Department, Headquarters Army of the Potomac, near Antietam, Maryland]

Alexander Gardner · October 4, 1862

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of airmail pilot Eddie Gardner and Muriel Kelly

Photograph of airmail pilot Eddie Gardner and Muriel Kelly

Artist not stated in the record · August 30, 1920

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Dish of Apples, by Paul Cézanne

Dish of Apples

Paul Cézanne · ca. 1876–77

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of Army pilot Lt. Torrey Webb on first day of airmail service

Photograph of Army pilot Lt. Torrey Webb on first day of airmail service

Artist not stated in the record · May 15, 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Roadside Halt, by Richard Parkes Bonington

Roadside Halt

Richard Parkes Bonington · 1826

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of Army Air Corps pilots Maj. Reuben Fleet and Lt. George Boyle

Photograph of Army Air Corps pilots Maj. Reuben Fleet and Lt. George Boyle

Artist not stated in the record · May 15, 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail pilot Ira Biffle

Photograph of airmail pilot Ira Biffle

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1927

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail pilots Edison Mouton and Rexford Levisee

Photograph of airmail pilots Edison Mouton and Rexford Levisee

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1921

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail pilot Eddie Gardner and airplane

Photograph of airmail pilot Eddie Gardner and airplane

Artist not stated in the record · 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of JR-1B mail airplane designed by the Standard Aircraft Corporation

Photograph of JR-1B mail airplane designed by the Standard Aircraft Corporation

Artist not stated in the record · 1920s

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail pilot Jack Knight

Photograph of airmail pilot Jack Knight

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1924

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail pilot Eddie Gardner

Photograph of airmail pilot Eddie Gardner

Artist not stated in the record · August 1918

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. 9 matched · 9 examined · 3 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.6 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 3621914 matched · 40 examined · 0 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 13:29 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.