Museums and open art · by Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam)

Rijksmuseum Open Data

The Rijksmuseum's open data portal: metadata for 800,000 collection objects, high-resolution photos of 600,000 of them, library records and vocabularies, served by keyless APIs, IIIF and bulk downloads.

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

Open data.rijksmuseum.nl ↗ agent.md

For your project

Official API: Official API · Free
“You can use the OAI-PMH API , the Search API or the LDES API to harvest collection data. The complete collection is also available for download .” data.rijksmuseum.nl/docs/
Key: Not needed
“The API is available at the following URL. No API key is needed. GET https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/search/collection” data.rijksmuseum.nl/docs/search
Formats: JSON-LD, N-TRIPLES, IIIF, XML
Data download: Yes n-triples (tar.gz)
License: Public Domain / CC0 for most items; CC BY 4.0 where copyright applies Collection data and images marked Public Domain or CC0 (CC BY 4.0 items need credit; items still under copyright are excluded)
Commercial use: Commercial use OK
“According to our policy, much of the information and data on the Rijksmuseum's collection website and through our open data services can be freely used, including for commercial purposes, without needing to request permission.” data.rijksmuseum.nl/policy/
Credit: Credit depends on the item
“In some cases, copyright does apply. If so, a Creative Commons BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence is indicated. This allows you to use the material, as long as you acknowledge the Rijksmuseum as the source.” data.rijksmuseum.nl/policy/
Embedding: Can be embedded
“For much of the information and data on the collection website, you will find a Public Domain or Creative Commons Zero (CC0) Public Domain Dedication under the copyright notice, meaning you can use the material freely” data.rijksmuseum.nl/policy/
Using the website: Free

Read on Rijksmuseum Open Data'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://data.rijksmuseum.nl/search/collection?creator=Vermeer&type=painting

The Search API needs no key but returns only Linked Art identifiers (id.rijksmuseum.nl/...); resolve each id for details and image links, and page with pageToken.
Check each object's copyright notice: PD/CC0 is free, CC BY 4.0 needs 'Rijksmuseum' credit, and copyrighted photos are off-limits.
Do not imply Rijksmuseum endorses your app.
Use the data dumps or OAI-PMH/LDES for full harvests rather than paging the Search API.

Paste into your agent: Read https://agentgid.com/resources/rijksmuseum-data-services/agent.md before using Rijksmuseum Open Data.

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 print-on-demand or wallpaper shop using public-domain Rijksmuseum images
A color or material explorer that groups paintings by technique and period from the bulk dump
A deep-zoom IIIF viewer for one artist's works with linked data captions

More in Museums and open art

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The Met Open Access 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 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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