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 “Prisoner jar” — 46 records examined, 31 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-03 15:09 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.
Prisoner jar

Prisoner jar

Artist not stated in the record · 200–800 CE

Public domainThe Met
Stage Design, Prison Interior

Stage Design, Prison Interior

Artist not stated in the record · early 19th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
The Dream of Aeneas, by Salvator Rosa

The Dream of Aeneas

Salvator Rosa · 1660–65

Public domainThe Met
Union Prisoner-of-War Cover

Union Prisoner-of-War Cover

Artist not stated in the record · 1864

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Divan (Anthology) of Hafiz

Divan (Anthology) of Hafiz

Artist not stated in the record · last quarter 18th century

Public domainThe Met
Union Prisoner-of-War Cover

Union Prisoner-of-War Cover

Artist not stated in the record · 1864

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Shabti of the Overseer of the Fleet Hekaemsaf

Shabti of the Overseer of the Fleet Hekaemsaf

Artist not stated in the record · 570–526 BCE

Public domainThe Met
Union Prisoner-of-War Cover

Union Prisoner-of-War Cover

Artist not stated in the record · 1864

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Shabti of the Overseer of the Fleet Hekaemsaf

Shabti of the Overseer of the Fleet Hekaemsaf

Artist not stated in the record · 570–526 BCE

Public domainThe Met
Union prisoner of war cover

Union prisoner of war cover

Artist not stated in the record · May 12, 1865

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Shabti of the Overseer of the Fleet Hekaemsaf

Shabti of the Overseer of the Fleet Hekaemsaf

Artist not stated in the record · 570–526 BCE

Public domainThe Met
Union prisoner of war cover

Union prisoner of war cover

Artist not stated in the record · Oct. 26, 1864

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Prison issue baseball cap with black panther drawing worn by Herman Wallace

Prison issue baseball cap with black panther drawing worn by Herman Wallace

Artist not stated in the record · after 1972

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
A Visit to the Alexandrofski Prison, by Henry Wolf, born Eckwersheim, Alsace 1852-died New York City 1916

A Visit to the Alexandrofski Prison

Henry Wolf, born Eckwersheim, Alsace 1852-died New York City 1916 · 1889

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Stage Design, Prison Interior with the Death of Socrates, by Antonio Giuseppe Basoli, Italian, 1774–1843

Stage Design, Prison Interior with the Death of Socrates

Antonio Giuseppe Basoli, Italian, 1774–1843 · early 19th century

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. 6 matched · 6 examined · 0 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. 14803 matched · 40 examined · 31 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where metadata_usage.access === "CC0" and an image resource was published.9 shown

These figures describe the pass run at 2026-09-03 15:09 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.