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. 23 shown for “Sleeve Fragment with a Band Decorated with an Animal” — 64 records examined, 8 dropped by the rights gate.
Archives queried 2026-09-03 01:02 UTC · fetched live for this request
isPublicDomain field is true for this object.metadata_usage.access reads CC0 — a waiver, not an expired term.
Sleeve Fragment with a Band Decorated with an Animal
Artist not stated in the record · 9th–10th century

Fragments
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1246

Wall clock (cartel)
Etienne LeNoir · ca. 1735–40

Fragment
Artist not stated in the record · 4th–5th century

Panel
Artist not stated in the record · second half 8th century

Dress made by an unidentified enslaved woman
Unidentified Woman or Women · 1845-1865

Standing Figure with Jeweled Headdress
Artist not stated in the record · 12th–early 13th century

Brighella
Artist not stated in the record · early 18th century

Saddle
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1400–1420

The Lion Strangler
Artist not stated in the record · early–mid-12th century

Richly Decorated Tunic
Artist not stated in the record · 660–870 (radiocarbon date, 95% probability)

White embroidered net dress with lace
Unidentified · ca.1975

Storage jar decorated with mountain goats
Artist not stated in the record · ca. 4000–3600 BCE

Cream lace wedding gown with corded floral motifs
Annie Hauer, American · 1895

Roller (one of a pair)
Meissen Manufactory · ca. 1740

Nurse's jacket and pants
Artist not stated in the record · 19th century

Roller (one of a pair)
Meissen Manufactory · model ca. 1740, mounts mid-18th century

Ivory wedding dress with bows and sequin floral decoration with detachable train
Bryan K. Osburn, American · 1993-1999

Three-light candelabra (candélabre or girandole) (one of a pair)
Johann Joachim Kändler · ca. 1750

Fragment
Artist not stated in the record · early 18th century

Men's frock coat, waistcoat, and shirt for theatrical production
Unidentified · late 20th century

Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement
Fra Filippo Lippi · ca. 1440

Red and yellow dress worn by Janet Jackson as Penny Woods on Good Times
Rita Riggs, American, born 1930 · December 1977
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. 4382 matched · 24 examined · 0 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. 2806708 matched · 40 examined · 8 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 2026-09-03 01:02 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.