Introducing Open Access at The Met
February 8, 2017 7:36 AM   Subscribe

All 375,000 images of public-domain works in The Met collection are now available to use, share, and remix—without restriction.
posted by roomthreeseventeen (21 comments total) 98 users marked this as a favorite
 
What a wonderful resource: many thanks for posting it, roomthreeseventeen. I’ve been looking at the Vanitas Still Life by Jacques de Gheyn II; Insects and the Head of a Wind God by Joris Hoefnagel; Arent van Bolten’s A Fantastic Creature; F. X. Messerschmidt’s A Hypocrite and a Slanderer; and The Burial of Punchinello by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, etc., etc.!
posted by misteraitch at 8:13 AM on February 8, 2017 [2 favorites]


So the location filtering is kinda wonky. Let's say you want to see stuff from Armenia. Well, when you expand the "Geographic Location" filter and click on "Show More" then you won't see it. You'll have to select the continent that it's in instead. So you have to select "Asia". This will make the filter close. You then have to click once more onto "Show More" and then select Armenia.

So every selection brings you more filters for the chosen area. Another example is Queens, New York. You have to select New York City and then you get the options for the available boroughs.
posted by I-baLL at 8:13 AM on February 8, 2017 [1 favorite]


I was interested in the distribution of objects by date, so I made a couple of graphs. Newer objects are less likely to be public domain, no shock there. It's interesting to see the dating of objects cluster around century years. I suppose if someone has to guess the age of an object around 1800, they'll just put 1800.
posted by demiurge at 9:36 AM on February 8, 2017


Terrific news. A friend separately saw this and asked me if this meant that the images could be used for cards that she would make, taking details or the whole of the work as part of the design.

IANAL, so does anyone know if the CC0 license allows for this? (sorry to make this a quasi-AskMeFi)
posted by the sobsister at 9:40 AM on February 8, 2017


IANAL, so does anyone know if the CC0 license allows for this? (sorry to make this a quasi-AskMeFi)

From their own website
: "You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission."

With the caveats they list, which may well not apply depending on what your friend is thinking about, I'm taking that as a yes. (It better be. I stumbled on this yesterday and spent a good part of last night, coincidentally, downloading some sixteenth century images for the next book, which I hope will be commercial. )

Mind you, there are still many works that are not up, so there's that. But bravo in any case.
posted by BWA at 9:59 AM on February 8, 2017


We've created 20 thematic sets of images to get you started: Masterpiece Paintings, Cats, Monsters and Mythological Creatures...

Talk about your knowing your audience.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:09 AM on February 8, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm hyperventilating. This is amazing.
posted by mochapickle at 10:17 AM on February 8, 2017


Indeed, this is amazing.

A few years ago, they also started posting 3D models online via Thingiverse, though they have only increased that collection from "more than thirty models" then to 75 as of writing this (Feb. 8, 2017).

But they have been thinking (and blogging) about 3D modeling, as seen in Edible Met: Eating Art to Understand (blog post, June 9, 2015).
posted by filthy light thief at 10:46 AM on February 8, 2017


time to put trump faces on everything horrible.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:55 AM on February 8, 2017 [1 favorite]


Ooo, there's crochet! Though some of it could really use much higher-res photos. Hard to make a copy when I can't see what stitches were used.
posted by asperity at 11:09 AM on February 8, 2017


where is the monster collection
i need monster collection
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:33 AM on February 8, 2017


"But they have been thinking (and blogging) about 3D modeling, as seen in Edible Met: Eating Art to Understand (blog post, June 9, 2015)."

That was one of the first things that crossed my mind: do they provide enough imagery to create 3 models?

So I did a shallow dive into the state of creating 3d models from photos, and it looks like it's still a lot of work, and the 3 or so photos they provide for every image won't make this an easy task, for certain.

I hope this is still an ongoing concern of theirs. I fully understand if they decided they should just wait a couple of years to allow the 3d scanning technology to advance (which would obviously be better than using photographs).

I eagerly await the worlds museum pieces to be available to all for use in virtual environments.

But this is wonderful, and pretty exciting stuff. I'm ecstatic that museum's are trying to make their collections available to the world, regardless of the geographical location of their visitors. Yay!
posted by el io at 12:24 PM on February 8, 2017


IANAL, so does anyone know if the CC0 license allows for this?

Yes, CC0 allows any use, attribution not required.
posted by nev at 12:48 PM on February 8, 2017 [2 favorites]


This is utterly wonderful. I am always so excited about things like this - the clear public sharing of public domain works, especially by large institutions with amazing collections - and if it weren't for Metafilter, I would probably miss most of these announcements.

Thank you so much, roomthreeseventeen! (And thanks to the Met as well, of course!)
posted by kristi at 12:54 PM on February 8, 2017


where is the monster collection

'grotesque' may be a helpful search term.
posted by jedicus at 1:34 PM on February 8, 2017


  where is the monster collection

here: Monsters and Mythological Creatures

(it's only really a monster collection if you can't count higher than 8)
posted by scruss at 3:54 PM on February 8, 2017


The Heilbrunn Timeline is a great tool for art teachers. This is out of the Met.
posted by Oyéah at 4:08 PM on February 8, 2017


Just look at this hexagonal Iznik Tile.
Just look at these Jali Screens.

Props to the very subtle metadata application in the download images, too.
posted by scruss at 4:51 PM on February 8, 2017 [1 favorite]


I just selected the public domain search without any other filters and pored for hours over everything. Flitting in time hivver'n'fivver through all kinds of matter, pottery shards and cigarette cards, fine frocks, gorgeous goblets, tattered ancient bits of rag. Was a blast, thank you.

This C 17th portrait study by Orazio Borgianni is superb. I do quibble a little with the tone of the accompanying text. Not sure it's necessarily a meditation on mortality just because the subject is old. And the light is "merciless"? Some sort of feminine vanity assumption going on there? Anyway, never mind the bollocks, just look at the painting, it's fantastic, it made me meditate on lots of things, and also it reminds me of Judy Dench.
posted by valetta at 9:06 PM on February 8, 2017 [1 favorite]


Just, you know, don't eat the pictures. (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, ah ah ah.)
posted by BiggerJ at 4:23 PM on February 9, 2017


Wonderful images of otters.
posted by valannc at 5:44 PM on February 18, 2017


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