The 'Met' Museum Of Art Adds 375k Images To The Public Domain

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has once again made a massive batch of images public domain, marking its latest release since the 400,000 images it made available back in 2014. This time around, the Met has made more than 375,000 images available under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, doing so under the new Open Access policy. The images are all public domain artwork in the Met's collection.

The Internet offers the opportunity for individuals all over the world to view the collections contained at the Met, including people who will never get the chance to visit the museum in person. That's a wonderful opportunity, but one that needs to be activity utilized...something the Met has been doing for a few years now. By making these images public domain, they can be used in other works, as well.

Now that these images are available, they can be, for example, used in textbooks and by teachers as part of materials and projects for students. They can also be printed out by individuals who want them on their wall, used as part of other art projects, in online courses and learning platforms such as Khan Academy, and more.

The museum advices the public that not all of its collection is available online, including things that are known to be under copyright or things where the copyright is unknown. Also, the museum has excluded things that might present publicity or privacy issues, when the work is owned by a different institution or person, there are restrictions by the lender/donor/artist, or the digital image ended up being of insufficient quality.

SOURCE: The Metropolitan Museum of Art