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. 24 shown for “Photograph of airmail pilot Paul Collins” — 59 records examined, 4 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-01 13:32 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.
A Woman Seated beside a Vase of Flowers (Madame Paul Valpinçon?), by Edgar Degas

A Woman Seated beside a Vase of Flowers (Madame Paul Valpinçon?)

Edgar Degas · 1865

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of airmail pilot Paul Collins and bag of first overnight airmail

Photograph of airmail pilot Paul Collins and bag of first overnight airmail

Artist not stated in the record · July 1, 1925

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
View of the Domaine Saint-Joseph, by Paul Cézanne

View of the Domaine Saint-Joseph

Paul Cézanne · late 1880s

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of airmail pilot Paul Collins

Photograph of airmail pilot Paul Collins

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1924

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Madame Georges Charpentier (Marguerite-Louise Lemonnier, 1848–1904) and Her Children, Georgette-Berthe (1872–1945) and Paul-Emile-Charles (1875–1895), by Auguste Renoir

Madame Georges Charpentier (Marguerite-Louise Lemonnier, 1848–1904) and Her Children, Georgette-Berthe (1872–1945) and Paul-Emile-Charles (1875–1895)

Auguste Renoir · 1878

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of airmail pilot Reuben Wagner

Photograph of airmail pilot Reuben Wagner

Artist not stated in the record · September 1, 1929

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Portrait of a Newhaven Pilot, by Hill and Adamson

Portrait of a Newhaven Pilot

Hill and Adamson · 1843–1847

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
Lions in a Mountainous Landscape, by Théodore Géricault

Lions in a Mountainous Landscape

Théodore Géricault · ca. 1818–20

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
Boy with a Sword, by Edouard Manet

Boy with a Sword

Edouard Manet · 1861

Public domainThe Met
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
Boating, by Edouard Manet

Boating

Edouard Manet · 1874

Public domainThe Met
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
Gardanne, by Paul Cézanne

Gardanne

Paul Cézanne · 1885–86

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
[Supply Steamers at Nashville, Tennessee], by Rodney Poole

[Supply Steamers at Nashville, Tennessee]

Rodney Poole · 1862

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of airmail pilot Edward Killgore

Photograph of airmail pilot Edward Killgore

Artist not stated in the record · 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Irises, by Vincent van Gogh

Irises

Vincent van Gogh · 1890

Public domainThe Met
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
Buzz Aldrin's Footprint on the Surface of the Moon, by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Buzz Aldrin's Footprint on the Surface of the Moon

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) · 1969

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of airmail pilot Eddie Gardner

Photograph of airmail pilot Eddie Gardner

Artist not stated in the record · 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Marguerite-Thérèse (Margot) Berard (1874–1956), by Auguste Renoir

Marguerite-Thérèse (Margot) Berard (1874–1956)

Auguste Renoir · 1879

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of airmail pilot Earl F. Ward

Photograph of airmail pilot Earl F. Ward

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1924

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. 19 matched · 19 examined · 4 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.12 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 2968603 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 13:32 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.