Public Domain Image APIs: Museums, NASA and Libraries
Museum, space and library collections whose open images you can use in an app or a site, and the per-item rights you must still check.
For your agent: agent.md · MCP find_resources("public domain images")
Open sources
API, key and license read on each source's own pages
| Source | API | Key | Commercial use |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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. |
Official API · Free | No | Commercial use OK |
| 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. |
Official API · Free | No | Commercial use OK |
| NASA Image and Video Library NASA's searchable archive of mission photos, videos and audio, with a free JSON API that returns metadata and direct links to each file in several sizes. |
Official API | No | Commercial use with conditions |
| Europeana A single search portal and set of APIs over records from European museums, libraries and archives, with CC0 metadata and per-item rights labels for the linked images, texts, audio and video. |
Official API | Yes | Commercial use with conditions |
| Library of Congress The US national library's online collections of photos, maps, manuscripts, newspapers, recordings and books, with a keyless JSON API plus IIIF image, full-text and streaming services. |
Official API · Free | No | Commercial use with conditions |
| The Public Domain Review An online journal that digs up strange and beautiful out-of-copyright art, books, films and audio, with curated collection posts and long essays that link to the source archives. |
No official API | — | Commercial use with conditions |
| Internet Archive A non-profit digital library of uploaded books, films, audio, software and web snapshots, with open APIs for search, item metadata and file download. |
Official API | No | Commercial use with conditions |
Libraries
From Tools
Build ideas
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.Space photo wallpapers from NASA's archiveAn app or bot that finds NASA mission photos on a theme (Apollo, Mars, the Moon) and makes phone or desktop wallpapers with the caption.