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. 12 shown for “Underworld Painter” — 40 records examined, 11 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-26 22:57 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.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: HTTP 403 from collectionapi.metmuseum.org. Results from the remaining archive are shown unchanged — nothing is substituted for a source that did not answer.

Hades; Persephone in the Underworld (Offering to Proserpine), by Felice Giani, Italian, 1758–1823

Hades; Persephone in the Underworld (Offering to Proserpine)

Felice Giani, Italian, 1758–1823 · ca. 1820

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Mascoutah Kennel Club Owney tag

Mascoutah Kennel Club Owney tag

Artist not stated in the record · 1897

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Proserpine, by Hiram Powers, born Woodstock, VT 1805-died Florence, Italy 1873

Proserpine

Hiram Powers, born Woodstock, VT 1805-died Florence, Italy 1873 · carved after 1873

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Proserpine, by Hiram Powers, born Woodstock, VT 1805-died Florence, Italy 1873

Proserpine

Hiram Powers, born Woodstock, VT 1805-died Florence, Italy 1873 · 1839-1873

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
View on the Missouri, Alluvial Banks Falling in, 600 Miles above St. Louis, by George Catlin, born Wilkes-Barre, PA 1796-died Jersey City, NJ 1872

View on the Missouri, Alluvial Banks Falling in, 600 Miles above St. Louis

George Catlin, born Wilkes-Barre, PA 1796-died Jersey City, NJ 1872 · 1832

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Icon, by Ethiopian Orthodox

Icon

Ethiopian Orthodox · Late 18th century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Winslow Homer, by Thomas A. Gray, active 1863

Winslow Homer

Thomas A. Gray, active 1863 · 1863

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Patent model for stencils for sign painter's template

Patent model for stencils for sign painter's template

Artist not stated in the record · ca 1874

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Gentlemen's Committee on the Fine Arts, by Mathew B. Brady, 1823? - 15 Jan 1896

Gentlemen's Committee on the Fine Arts

Mathew B. Brady, 1823? - 15 Jan 1896 · 1864

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Ipomoea lozani J.H. Painter

Ipomoea lozani J.H. Painter

Artist not stated in the record · 18 Aug 1905

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Winslow Homer (with six other artists, including E. L. Henry and Alfred C. Howland), by Unidentified Artist

Winslow Homer (with six other artists, including E. L. Henry and Alfred C. Howland)

Unidentified Artist · c. 1865

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Street Lamppost Letterbox

Street Lamppost Letterbox

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1880

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. HTTP 403 from collectionapi.metmuseum.org. No records from this archive are shown for this query.Unavailable
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 12898 matched · 40 examined · 11 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 2026-08-26 22:57 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.