Museums and open art · by The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met Open Access

The Met's free, keyless JSON API and CC0 CSV dataset with object records for more than 470,000 artworks, including image URLs for public-domain works.

Five thousand years of art in one open API: you can pull a Van Gogh's full record and high-res image with a single unauthenticated request.

API, no keyDownloadCommercial OK

Open metmuseum.org ↗ agent.md

For your project

Official API: Official API · Free 80 requests per second; /v1.1/search returns max 500 IDs per page and only the first 10,000 results
“The API (RESTful web service in JSON format) gives access to all of The Met’s Open Access data” metmuseum.github.io/
Key: Not needed
“At this time, we do not require API users to register or obtain an API key to use the service.” metmuseum.github.io/
Formats: JSON
Data download: Yes csv
“It is a CSV of the entire open-access collection, updated regularly, and needs no API requests at all.” metmuseum.github.io/
License: CC0 Open Access object data (API and MetObjects.csv); images only for works marked isPublicDomain
Commercial use: Commercial use OK
“provides select datasets of information on more than 470,000 artworks in its Collection for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use.” metmuseum.github.io/
Credit: No credit needed
“Please consider attributing or citing The Metropolitan Museum of Art's CC0 select datasets” github.com/metmuseum/openaccess
Embedding: Embedding unclear
Using the website: Free

Read on The Met Open Access's own pages on Oct 23, 2026 · license or terms · API docs. Check the license page before you ship.

For your agent

A request your code or agent can make with no key:

https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/public/collection/v1/objects/436535

No key needed; use /v1.1/search (paginated, offset+limit) since /v1/search was retired on 1 Oct 2026, then fetch /objects/{id}; only use primaryImage when isPublicDomain is true.
Keep under 80 requests per second; for bulk work use the MetObjects.csv dataset instead of crawling the API
Only reuse images of objects with isPublicDomain = true; the dataset also lists works still under copyright
Attribution is not required but requested; do not misrepresent the dataset or its source

Paste into your agent: Read https://agentgid.com/resources/met-open-access/agent.md before using The Met Open Access.

What you can build

Art of the day from public-domain museum collectionsA site, widget or wallpaper that shows one public-domain masterpiece a day, with its story, from The Met and the Rijksmuseum.

A 'random masterpiece' wallpaper or screensaver using public-domain objects and their primaryImage URLs
A timeline or map explorer of the collection by date, culture and department, built from MetObjects.csv
A print-on-demand or teaching app using CC0 public-domain images, which the license allows commercially

More in Museums and open art

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Rijksmuseum Open Data You get Dutch Golden Age masterpieces and hundreds of thousands of lesser-known objects as open, linked data with zoomable images, most of it free even for commercial use. API, no keyDownloadCommercial OK Google Arts & Culture Gigapixel zooms let you get closer to the brushstrokes than you could standing in the gallery, and you can walk through museums you may never visit. License unclear WikiArt Its tagging by style, genre and movement lets you trace how art changed across centuries, from well-known masters to artists few people have heard of. APINon-commercial The Public Domain Review Every post is a rabbit hole into forgotten prints, diagrams and oddities from old libraries, each traced back to the institution that holds the scan. Commercial: conditions Open Culture It is a curated map of free culture: one list can lead you from a lecture series to a silent film to a recorded poetry reading. License unclear

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