Librarians are big fans of Open Access materials! Our whole jobs are about sharing information with our communities – so we love to be able to do it freely!
Taking a massive step in making Open Access materials more useful to us, the Met has made most of their images available to be used by you, by your patrons, by anyone. You definitely want to browse through this material to see what kinds of images will help you in your work!
The Metropolitan Museum of Art creates, organizes, and disseminates a broad range of digital images and data that document the rich history of the Museum, its collection, exhibitions, events, people, and activities.
Images of artworks in the Museum’s collection fall into two categories:
- images of works the Museum believes to be in the public domain, or those to which the Museum waives any copyright it might have
- images of works the Museum knows to be under copyright or other restrictions
On February 7, 2017, The Metropolitan Museum of Art implemented a new policy known as Open Access, which makes images of artworks it believes to be in the public domain widely and freely available for unrestricted use, and at no cost, in accordance with the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) designation and the Terms and Conditions of this website.
It also makes available data from the entire online collection―both works it believes to be in the public domain and those under copyright or other restrictions―including basic information such as title, artist, date, medium, and dimensions. This data is available to all in accordance with the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) designation.
We encourage you to explore the images of artworks the Museum believes to be in the public domain by visiting Collection and selecting the “Public Domain Artworks” filter in the left-hand column. We’ve created 20 thematic sets of images to get you started: Masterpiece Paintings, Cats, Monsters and Mythological Creatures, Met-staches, New York City, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, Winter Wonderland, Vincent van Gogh, The Pre-Raphaelite Style, Self-Portraits, Quilts, Gold, Georges Seurat, Arms and Armor, The Monuments Men at The Met, Faces from the Ancient World, Tiffany Glass, Dress to Impress, Art or Design?, and Dishes.
If an image for an artwork accompanied by the CC0 icon is unavailable on our website, please refer to the instructions for requesting new images below.”