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. 13 shown for “Relief plaque with Wadjet and Nekhbet, the "Two Ladies"; falcon on opposite” — 41 records examined, 23 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-27 05:17 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.
Relief plaque with Wadjet and Nekhbet, the "Two Ladies"; falcon on opposite

Relief plaque with Wadjet and Nekhbet, the "Two Ladies"; falcon on opposite

Artist not stated in the record · 400–30 BCE

Public domainThe Met
Four Continents

Four Continents

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1770

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Four Continents

Four Continents

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1770

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Four Continents

Four Continents

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1770

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Four Continents

Four Continents

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1770

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Rookwood, by Rookwood Pottery, American, 1880 - 1967

Rookwood

Rookwood Pottery, American, 1880 - 1967 · 1903–13

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Cornerstone plaque from the Bank of Finance, by Bank of Finance, American, 1964 - 1981

Cornerstone plaque from the Bank of Finance

Bank of Finance, American, 1964 - 1981 · 1964

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Knife

Knife

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1870–80

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Charger with Alexander the Great Defeating Darius Surrounded by the Four Continents

Charger with Alexander the Great Defeating Darius Surrounded by the Four Continents

Artist not stated in the record · 1689

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Textile

Textile

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1780

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Framed plaque, by John Turner, Lane End, Staffordshire, England, 1759 - 1780

Framed plaque

John Turner, Lane End, Staffordshire, England, 1759 - 1780 · ca. 1780

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Audelco best musical production award for Champeen awarded to Melvin Van Peebles

Audelco best musical production award for Champeen awarded to Melvin Van Peebles

Artist not stated in the record · November 21, 1983

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Ornamental Vase Design, by François Boucher, French, 1703–1770

Ornamental Vase Design

François Boucher, French, 1703–1770 · ca. 1738

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. 1 matched · 1 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.1 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 1944833 matched · 40 examined · 23 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 2026-08-27 05:17 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.