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. 15 shown for “Photograph of airmail pilot Eddie Gardner and Muriel Kelly” — 43 records examined, 1 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-01 15:44 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.
Jean-Baptiste Faure (1830–1914), by Edouard Manet

Jean-Baptiste Faure (1830–1914)

Edouard Manet · 1882–83

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
Boy with a Sword, by Edouard Manet

Boy with a Sword

Edouard Manet · 1861

Public domainThe Met
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
The Horse Fair, by Rosa Bonheur

The Horse Fair

Rosa Bonheur · 1852–55

Public domainThe Met
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
Photograph of airmail pilot Eddie Gardner

Photograph of airmail pilot Eddie Gardner

Artist not stated in the record · 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Pilot Eddie Gardner's aviation leggings

Pilot Eddie Gardner's aviation leggings

Artist not stated in the record · 1918-1919

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Pilot Edward Gardner’s flight suit

Pilot Edward Gardner’s flight suit

Artist not stated in the record · 1918-1919

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Pilot Edward Gardner's aviation goggles

Pilot Edward Gardner's aviation goggles

Artist not stated in the record · 1918-1919

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Pilot Edward Gardner’s aviation helmet

Pilot Edward Gardner’s aviation helmet

Artist not stated in the record · 1918-1919

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Pilot Edward Gardner's aviation face mask

Pilot Edward Gardner's aviation face mask

Artist not stated in the record · 1918-1919

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Aviation goggles used by pilot Eddie Gardner

Aviation goggles used by pilot Eddie Gardner

Artist not stated in the record · May 6, 1921

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Airmail schedule dispatch board

Airmail schedule dispatch board

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1918-1929

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Note from pilot Max Miller to Benjamin Lipsner

Note from pilot Max Miller to Benjamin Lipsner

Artist not stated in the record · November 29, 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. 3 matched · 3 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.3 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 3146386 matched · 40 examined · 1 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 15:44 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.