The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York provided free access to all high-resolution digital images of public domain artworks from its collection. From now it can be used for both scholarly and commercial purposes. The museum’s new open access policy also includes collaborating with global partners to enable greater access to the collection.
"Our comprehensive and diverse museum collection spans 5,000 years of world culture",
said Mr. Campbell, the director of the Museum.
said Mr. Campbell, the director of the Museum.
Terrace at Sainte-Adresse
1867, 98.1×129.9 cm
Twenty thematic sets of images are created for users' convenience: Masterpiece Paintings, Cats, Monsters and Mythological Creatures, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, Winter Wonderland, Vincent van Gogh, The Pre-Raphaelite Style, Self-Portraits, Gold, Georges Seurat, Tiffany Glass and others
Go to the "Cats" … and download the artwork you liked
The initial roll-out features a total of 375,000 images of the 200,000 works from the Met’s collection. Every image is of high-resolution of 4,000-pixel-wide, which allows the viewers to zoom in and "really see the beauty of the masterpieces".
Left: Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, "Princesse de Broglie" (detail) (1851 — 1853), The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Screenshot of the Met’s official website dedicated to the painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder "The Harvesters". Under the image below the sign of the public domain (Creative Commons Zero, CC0 license) and download buttons are marked.
The Met is not the first museum that makes its collection freely available. For now other museums that have their collections available online include the Smithsonian Design Museum in New York; Copenhagen’s National Gallery of Denmark and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. But the uniqueness of the Met’s new policy is its partnerships, which is meant for to disseminating the artworks from the collection to the widest possible audience. Art lovers will now be able to download images not only from the museum’s website directly, but from the popular sites, such as Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons, Artstor, Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Art Resource and Pinterest.
In addition, Richard Knipel, the representative of Wikimedia Commons, joins the Met’s staff officially
A Goldsmith in his Shop (Saint Eligius)
1449, 100.1×85.8 cm
"Our core mission is to be open and accessible for all who wish to study and enjoy the works of art in our care. Increasing access to the Museum’s collection and scholarship serves the interests and needs of our 21st-century audiences', said Thomas P. Campbell. 'In our digital age, the Museum’s audience is not only the 6.7 million people who visited The Met’s three locations in New York City this past year, but also the three-billion-plus internet-connected individuals around the world", added Loic Tallon, the Met’s Chief Digital Officer.
The Death Of Socrates. Fragment
1787, 129.5×196.2 cm
Now roughly one million public domain works of prints, engravings, posters, post cards, and other ephemera have yet to be digitized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Based on materials of the Met’s official website, news.artnet.com and artdaily.com
