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 “Southern Magnolia, Southern Magnolia, Magnolia” — 43 records examined, 9 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-01 09:33 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.
Saint John the Baptist; Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata, by Gerard David

Saint John the Baptist; Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata

Gerard David · ca. 1485–90

Public domainThe Met
Southern Magnolia, Southern Magnolia, Magnolia

Southern Magnolia, Southern Magnolia, Magnolia

Artist not stated in the record

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Wangchuan Villa, by Wang Yuanqi

Wangchuan Villa

Wang Yuanqi · dated 1711

Public domainThe Met
Southern Magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora), by Mary Vaux Walcott, born Philadelphia, PA 1860-died St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada 1940

Southern Magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora)

Mary Vaux Walcott, born Philadelphia, PA 1860-died St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada 1940 · 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Nine Songs, by Zhao Mengfu

Nine Songs

Zhao Mengfu · 14th–15th century

Public domainThe Met
Southern Magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora), by Mary Vaux Walcott, born Philadelphia, PA 1860-died St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada 1940

Southern Magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora)

Mary Vaux Walcott, born Philadelphia, PA 1860-died St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada 1940 · 1923

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Magnolia grandiflora L.

Magnolia grandiflora L.

Artist not stated in the record

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Magnolia virginiana L.

Magnolia virginiana L.

Artist not stated in the record

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Magnolia acuminata (L.) L.

Magnolia acuminata (L.) L.

Artist not stated in the record

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Magnolia acuminata (L.) L.

Magnolia acuminata (L.) L.

Artist not stated in the record · 1878

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Magnolia fraseri Walter

Magnolia fraseri Walter

Artist not stated in the record · 1878

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Magnolia acuminata (L.) L.

Magnolia acuminata (L.) L.

Artist not stated in the record · 22 Apr 1919

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Magnolia virginiana L.

Magnolia virginiana L.

Artist not stated in the record · 1878

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Magnolia fraseri Walter

Magnolia fraseri Walter

Artist not stated in the record · 1878

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Magnolia virginiana L.

Magnolia virginiana L.

Artist not stated in the record · 3 Sep 1892

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. 229185 matched · 40 examined · 9 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 09:33 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.