If you are looking for some art—and I’m talking fine Art, with a capital “A”—The Metropolitan Museum is the spot to find it. And not only can you visit the museum when you are in New York (to look at the Art), you can also download almost half a million digital images of genuine, snob-approved works from the museum’s online archives—for free.
The Met hosts 492,000 high-resolution images, most of which are public domain, so you can use them for any non-commercial purpose—anything from printing a t-shirt with James Johnston of Straiton on it, to hanging a poster of The Penitence of Saint Jerome on your wall to remind you of the importance of self-mortification (I don’t kink-shame).
How to download Art from the Metropolitan’s online collection
Getting your mitts on that sweet, sweet art couldn’t be easier:
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Browse through the different sections to find one that appeals to you.
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Look for the “OA Public Domain” tag, as you can see in the below image of Marie Emilie Coignet de Courson with her dog. This means it’s available under the Met’s Open Access initiative, and you can use it for free (as long as it’s for a non-commercial purpose).
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Download it, frame it, worship it. Whatever. Just don’t sell it.
How “public domain” right affect paintings in museums
Browsing the Met’s collection, and others, like the Getty Museum’s, has got me thinking about who really owns art. The answer is kind of tricky: The physical objects (paintings, sculptures, lyres crafted from human skulls) at the Met are owned by the museum itself. The intellectual property (what the art shows) belong first to its creator, but eventually to everyone: In the U.S., the ownership of IP reverts to the public domain—i.e. it’s owned by no one/everyone—95 years after the work’s creation or 70 years after the author’s death if the work was created before 1978.
The rights to an image created of an artwork (or anything else) is a separate thing: whoever took the photo owns the photo, until 70 years after their death, of course. You can visit the museum yourself and take a photo of a public domain work and use it any way you like, but the Met owns the rights to the images they’ve uploaded. They’ve simply chosen to release those rights to anyone who isn’t going to make up buck off their work.