The Met Open Access: 490,000 High-Resolution Art Images, Free for Any Use

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Open Access program is one of the most significant contributions any cultural institution has made to the global commons of freely available art images. Launched in 2017, the program makes over 490,000 high-resolution images of public domain artworks from the Met's collection available for free download under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licence, which means no attribution is required and the images can be used for any purpose, including commercial use, without restriction.

The Met's collection is one of the greatest in the world, spanning 5,000 years of art from every culture and continent. The Open Access program makes a substantial portion of this collection freely available to artists, researchers, educators, designers, and anyone else who wants to use these images. For artists who need high-quality reference images of historical artworks, the Met Open Access is one of the most valuable free resources available anywhere.

What the CC0 Licence Means in Practice

The Creative Commons Zero licence is the most permissive open licence available. It effectively places the images in the public domain, waiving all copyright and related rights to the extent permitted by law. This means that images downloaded from the Met Open Access can be used for any purpose, including:

Commercial use without restriction. You can use Met Open Access images in products you sell, in advertising, in commercial publications, or in any other commercial context without paying licensing fees or seeking permission.

Derivative works without restriction. You can modify, adapt, and build upon Met Open Access images to create new works, including paintings, illustrations, designs, and other creative works that incorporate or are inspired by the original images.

No attribution required. Unlike Creative Commons Attribution licences, CC0 does not require you to credit the Met or the original artist when using the images. Attribution is always good practice and is encouraged, but it is not legally required.

This combination of permissions makes the Met Open Access images genuinely useful for professional creative work in a way that more restrictive licences do not. Artists and designers who need historical art images for commercial projects can use Met Open Access images without the legal complexity and cost of licensing from other sources.

The Scope of the Collection

The Met's collection covers an extraordinary range of art from every period and culture, and the Open Access program includes images from across this breadth. Key areas of the collection available through Open Access include:

European paintings from the medieval period through the early twentieth century, including works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, El Greco, Velazquez, Rubens, Caravaggio, Monet, Cezanne, and hundreds of other major artists. The European painting collection is one of the finest in the world, and the high-resolution images available through Open Access allow detailed study of technique, brushwork, and surface that would be impossible without direct access to the works.

Ancient art from Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Near East, and other ancient civilisations, including sculpture, pottery, jewellery, and decorative objects that span thousands of years of human creative production. The ancient art collection is one of the Met's greatest strengths, and the Open Access images provide access to objects that are otherwise accessible only to museum visitors.

Asian art covering China, Japan, Korea, South and Southeast Asia, and the Islamic world, including paintings, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, and decorative arts from across the continent. The Asian art collection is one of the most comprehensive outside Asia, and the Open Access images make it accessible to researchers and artists worldwide.

American art from the colonial period through the twentieth century, including paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, and folk art that document the development of American visual culture. The American art collection is particularly strong in nineteenth-century landscape painting and the decorative arts of the colonial and federal periods.

Drawings and prints from the fifteenth century through the twentieth, including works on paper by major artists across all periods and styles. The drawings and prints collection is one of the finest in the world, and the high-resolution scans available through Open Access allow detailed study of technique and process.

How to Access the Images

The Met Open Access images are available through the museum's online collection database at metmuseum.org/art/collection. The database allows searching by artist, period, culture, medium, and other criteria, and each work's page includes information about the work's history, provenance, and condition alongside the downloadable image.

The search interface is well-designed and allows filtering by the Open Access designation, making it easy to find images that are available for free download. Each image page includes a download button that provides access to the highest resolution version available, which for many works is extremely high resolution, sufficient for large-format reproduction.

The API provided by the Met allows developers and researchers to access the Open Access collection programmatically, enabling the creation of tools and applications that use the collection data. The API is free to use and well-documented, making it accessible to developers with a range of technical backgrounds.

Practical Uses for Artists

For artists, the Met Open Access collection is valuable in several specific ways:

Reference for historical subjects. Artists working on historical subjects, whether for illustration, fine art, or design, can find high-quality reference images of historical costumes, objects, architecture, and environments in the Met collection. The breadth of the collection means that reference material is available for subjects from ancient Egypt to nineteenth-century America.

Study of technique. High-resolution images of paintings allow detailed study of brushwork, glazing, impasto, and other technical aspects of painting that are not visible in lower-resolution reproductions. Artists who want to understand how specific historical painters achieved their effects can study the Met's high-resolution images in detail.

Inspiration and reference for contemporary work. Many contemporary artists draw on historical art as a source of inspiration, imagery, and formal ideas. The Met Open Access collection provides free, unrestricted access to this material for use in contemporary creative work.

Educational use. Art educators can use Met Open Access images freely in teaching materials, presentations, and publications without licensing costs or restrictions.

The Bottom Line

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Open Access program is one of the most generous and practically valuable contributions any cultural institution has made to the global creative community. Over 490,000 high-resolution images of public domain artworks, available for free download and unrestricted use under a CC0 licence, represent an extraordinary resource for artists, researchers, educators, and designers worldwide. For anyone who needs high-quality historical art images for any purpose, the Met Open Access collection should be the first place they look.