
The Met Makes 375k Images Available for Free - brudgers
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/arts/design/met-museum-makes-375000-images-available-for-free.html
======
djsumdog
I've been looking for more CC0 resources as I've started doing more video
editing. This is pretty awesome.

Some other CC0 art/photo websites I've used a lot lately:

[https://pixabay.com/](https://pixabay.com/)

[https://unsplash.com/](https://unsplash.com/)

~~~
davegri
I actually created a meta search engine for high quality cc0 photos, its
called librestock. check it out :)
[http://librestock.com](http://librestock.com)

~~~
npolet
Do you have an API for this?

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brudgers
Announcement from the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
[http://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/digital-
underground/2017/open...](http://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/digital-
underground/2017/open-access-at-the-met)

~~~
reubenswartz
Nice. I didn't see a link in the NYT article.

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micrio
It's really a shame that it simply gives you the original files, not allowing
very high res images (ie greater than 10.000 x 10.000). We built a tool for
this that's being used by for instance Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum
[http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/](http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/) , which allows
for ultra-res images. The Met should also consider using
[http://micr.io/](http://micr.io/) or any similar technology.

~~~
j_r_f
Yes truly a shame that they gave us a ton of files for free use but they
aren't as ULTRA HD as you would like..

~~~
micrio
Ofcourse the huge volume is great, it's awesome! But by only offering single
high-res .jpg files instead of image tilesets just makes the viewing
experience less than pleasant.. Downloads are slow, the pages are
unresponsive, and I can imagine it's going to cost them tons of unneeded
bandwidth.

~~~
extra88
I agree that "deep zooming" is desirable. Looks like Micrio doesn't support
the International Image Interoperability Framework [0], something I think a
museum would be interested in. Oh, and I hate that
[http://micr.io](http://micr.io) uses a fullscreen background image that
highjacks the scroll wheel.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Image_Interopera...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Image_Interoperability_Framework)

~~~
micrio
Thanks for your reply, you're right about that. Currently we've only been
developing micr.io based on wishes we received, that includes features such as
hotspots, tours, etc. See [https://tuinderlusten-
jheronimusbosch.ntr.nl/en](https://tuinderlusten-jheronimusbosch.ntr.nl/en)
for its first release. We simply haven't had the time yet!

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pcurve
This is a real treat...

I can see Van Gogh like this one
[http://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/ep/original/DT1567.jpg](http://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/ep/original/DT1567.jpg)
in such detail, without having to go to the museum.

With my degrading eye sights, this might even be better than going to museum.

~~~
elorant
Unless you have a really big monitor, like 40" or so, nothing compares to the
real thing. I once saw a Rothko and my jaw dropped to the floor. The thing was
so imposing, not only the theme was captivating but the sheer size of the
picture made it look grandiose in every sense. The same goes for Pollock's
artworks, some Picassos and so on.

~~~
hackuser
> Unless you have a really big monitor, like 40" or so, nothing compares to
> the real thing

I disagree; simply, "nothing compares to the real thing". But I can't have the
real thing right here, so a large hi-def monitor is better than nothing.

EDIT: If I sell a 40" monitor displaying a high-res Van Gogh - will the price
compare to the real thing? (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

~~~
sogen
Well, there was a guy selling other people's Instagram pictures at $15k a
pop...

~~~
beautifulfreak
That would be Richard Prince. But he made $90k a pop.
[http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/27/living/richard-prince-
instagra...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/27/living/richard-prince-instagram-
feat/)

~~~
sogen
I should probably pursuit a career in copy.

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hackuser
It may seem obvious, but for those who haven't tried it: The effect of high-
res great art on a high-res luminescent screen can be magical. It puts all
those other desktop backgrounds to shame - instantly revealing how incredible
some of these images are. Make one your desktop background.

~~~
visarga
I displayed the Hermitage painting collection on a secondary 30'' monitor, set
to rotate at 5 minutes. A key factor was that I had the titles watermarked on
the images otherwise I would have been frustrated to see something beautiful
that I don't know the name of.

Had this setup for a couple of years, and watched lots of beautiful paintings.
My purpose was to submerge my visual perception into art for a long time and
just let my artistic perception develop organically.

~~~
asleepawake
How did you get the watermarks. Programmatically and if so how. Or did they
come that way

~~~
semi-extrinsic
There's many ways to skin that cat - assuming Unix, immediate options include:

the images are stored locally, you have some mapping from filename to title,
and you create new images with watermarks using ImageMagick in a bash script

or the images are hosted online, and you write a small C/Python/whatever code
that gets the URLs and associated titles from the host, and then uses Imlib2
(maybe with some wrapper) to display the images with titles rendered as text
composited on top

~~~
asleepawake
Yea I was trying to find a way to do it with code that's by default shipped on
the mac. Unfortunately imagemagick is not. And the php functions to actually
add text to an image are not loaded by default. Maybe I can do something by
converting the images to pdfs. The speed of the program isn't an issue it just
has to be completely automated.

~~~
asleepawake
finally found a way to do it with applescript objective c :)

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urda
Is there a torrent or dump of all the images? I wouldn't mind seeding /
helping to keep an archive of all this. This is pretty great!

~~~
gregsadetsky
To scrape, start here

[http://metmuseum.org/api/collection/collectionlisting?offset...](http://metmuseum.org/api/collection/collectionlisting?offset=0&pageSize=0&perPage=100&sortBy=Relevance&sortOrder=asc)

and increase 'offset' by 100. The JSON output contains image URLs. The total
number of results is 441048, so finding another endpoint that doesn't enforce
a limit of 100 on the 'perPage' argument would be great.

\---

EDIT: thanks to spitfare, I updated the perPage argument to 100. The site
doesn't allow larger values, but that's definitely a great start! (about 4k
requests to get everything)

~~~
scosman
They published an index on Github. It would likely be a more responsible way
to access this versus hammering their API.

[https://github.com/metmuseum/openaccess](https://github.com/metmuseum/openaccess)

~~~
gregsadetsky
Unfortunately, as stated in that repo's readme: `Images are not included and
are not part of the dataset.`

The repo doesn't include the images, which is understandable; however, the CSV
file doesn't even include links to the images.

~~~
kjell
Excluding the images themselves from the dataset is one thing, but there's an
open issue to include a link to the images:
[https://github.com/metmuseum/openaccess/issues/2](https://github.com/metmuseum/openaccess/issues/2)

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zump
Nice, maybe our deep nets can finally make real art after being trained on by
the masters.

~~~
dx034
Even many people wouldn't be able to create real art by looking at all those
pictures. Probably not even when trained by one of the painters.

~~~
vanderZwan
Have you seen Mario Klingemann's recent experiments?

[https://twitter.com/quasimondo/status/825821993501069317](https://twitter.com/quasimondo/status/825821993501069317)

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incompatible
These images were already in the public domain surely? In the United States
you don't get a copyright over a public domain work just be copying it, even
if digitally. It was established by Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. in
1999.

~~~
pjlegato
Yes, these images were already in the public domain. It was, however, not easy
to find high resolution digital images of them online. This move is about
making those images easily available on their website.

~~~
matt_morgan
They were also already available on the website in high resolution, many of
them since 2011. The difference this time is the CC0 licensing, I'm pretty
sure.

A lot of people are confused about the licensing of museum images and why it's
news that a major museum is releasing them CC0 when they're already public
domain. I see some good thoughts here--e.g., absolutely there is a difference
between 2D and 3D images (an image of a 3D work might have sufficient
additional creativity involved to support a separate copyright), and yes, the
Bridgeman decision is a thing. But Museums have a lot more to worry about than
that. E.g., there are a lot of orphan works. More importantly, there are
important people they want to be careful not to offend, whether living
artists, their estates, their representatives, or potential donors. In my
experience, all of those groups except artists tend to be more conservative
about sharing than the staff at most museums.

This is not to say that any of that trumps the law. But Bridgeman was one
weird case in one weird situation and it hasn't been tested in a museum
setting. What we're talking about is not whether you can legally use the image
as you like, but whether the museum will willingly show you the image. By
2011, the tide had turned and it was not going to be long before most/all
major collections saw sharing as more valuable than hoarding. But in 2009 that
wasn't the case.

~~~
pjlegato
The CC0 licensing assertion is simple ass-covering by the museum's lawyers.
Images that are exact replicas of works of artists who have been dead for 70
years or more are in fact public domain under US copyright law no matter what
license they assert, per Bridgeman.

Originality is a critical element of being able to assert copyright in a
derivative work. To the extent that these are exact reproductions, they have
no element of originality and the museum's assertions of license are invalid.

The story here is that you get an "official" public domain image from the
museum itself, which will presumably be of technically high quality -
appropriate lighting, correct focus, high res, camera plane exactly parallel
to the work, camera on a tripod, etc. as opposed to the widely varying quality
of the images you find on the web now - while some are technically fine,
others are shot by a museum visitor with shaky hands, scanned from a photo
book, etc.

You can now also find these images from a reputable, central source rather
than scattered across a slew of ad farms.

~~~
matt_morgan
Paul, you're actually going a little too far. No court case has ever shown
that a "museum's assertions of license are invalid," and these are case-by-
case issues. So Bridgeman may or may not apply in any given case. It could be
cited as precedent for sure. But e.g. I'm pretty sure it specifically limited
itself to 2D representations of 2D works.

When, in the past, good-hearted souls have scraped museum websites to
construct larger images (e.g., from the old-fashioned zooming tools that only
showed part of the image at a time), the museums in question stopped short of
pursuing it in court for fear of just what you say. So it has not been tested
(even though most thoughtful people agree with you about what would likely
happen).

The Met has had (most of; maybe almost all) these images online since 2011.
The licensing was unclear then--there was a hard to read, existing T&C that
was more or less NC-BY-SA. Or maybe it was "no derivatives," I'm not sure. But
getting the images out (hard but straightforward) without dealing with
changing the license (hard and complicated) served basically 100% of the
people without putting the Met at any risk.

This is now the third time in six years the Met has gotten a lot of news out
of the "release" of these images. One could argue that this is not a big step,
but if, in going CC0 it means they can release more images, that's a good
thing. I haven't seen any report that the number of images has changed,
actually. However, it does sound like they're not claiming copyright on 2D
representations of 3D works in the public domain, which they certainly could
do.

------
kjell
Wikipedia volunteers are doing some cool work to pull together data and images
from museums across the world:
[https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_sum_of_al...](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_sum_of_all_paintings)

------
ilyagr
See also Google art project, with tons of pictures from many museums in
insanely high resolution:
[https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/category/artis...](https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/category/artist?hl=en)

I find it awesome.

~~~
ilyagr
The downside of Google art project is that you aren't supposed to download the
images.

~~~
coldpie
Oh? A lot of them are on Wikipedia. Is there some special arrangement for a
subset of the images?

------
markdown
> free to download in high resolution from the Met’s website, no permission
> required.

Am I missing something, or is this not true. The pics I've seen are under
100KB.

~~~
greeneggs
The first I found is 3871x2635 pixels, 2.7MB [1]. I always find these archives
very difficult to navigate, though.

[1]
[http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/55612](http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/55612)

~~~
markdown
Hmm, I see a download button on that one. The one I referred to above, and
every other one I've seen, doesn't have a download button.

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delish
I'm curious about their reasoning for choosing Creative Commons Zero over the
public domain. I'm fond of the public domain; I've released some of my
software[0] into the public domain. Cynically, I think it's more fashionable
and branded to license something CC0 than declare it public domain. Despite my
cynicism, I like that they're doing this.

The article says:

> Enabled by the Museum's move to open access, we also announced today a
> series of major new partnerships—with Creative Commons, the Wikimedia
> community, Artstor . . . We'll be blogging about these partnerships in the
> coming weeks . . .

I suppose releasing pictures into the public domain doesn't lend itself to
"major new partnerships." ;).

[0] not that anybody's ever used it!

~~~
jacobr1
In some jurisdictions, you aren't actually allowed to release things to the
"public domain". In many where you are allowed, there is specific language
that must be used to make it binding. In some others, you can allow copying
... but you still are liable for uses of the work. So in that case you want to
create something that waives the liability at matches the impact of US public
domain declaration.

CC0 is just to tool to allow you to declare something in the public domain on
world-wide basis that meets the standards of as many jurisdictions as possible
and matches the expectations of most in the western world of what public
domain entails.

If you just add a header to your software saying "I release this work to the
public domain." You probably actually didn't.

~~~
delish
I've read that on CC's website. Can you point me to some examples where
US'ians (of which I am one) declared something public domain, and some country
acted against someone who used the US'ians work?

~~~
Hello71
even GPL has not really been tested in court (VMware case doesn't count yet),
so the odds of CC0 being tested is low. however, there are (at least) two good
reasons for using CC0 anyways:

1\. there is arguably a chilling effect if you make up your own license. I
don't know how much that applies in this case, but look at how json is being
removed from Debian and has been banned from Fedora for the undefinable
phrasing in its license. this leads me to

2\. just because it has not been tested doesn't mean it isn't a good idea; I
am not aware of anyone who has been killed by a PC falling on their head, but
if I were to attempt mounting a PC on my ceiling, I would seek help rather
than cobbling something I just made up. even better, if there are plans on the
internet that tens of engineers have verified to be reasonable, I should use
those instead of complaining that they are too "fashionable".

------
accountface
This is very well done. All museums should do this.

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emmelaich
Wow; I visited the The Met for the first time ever only last week.

The featured pic - El Greco's "The Vision of St. John" is one that really
caught my and my daughter's eye.

ps. For another museum that has put most (all?) online see the the Rijksmuseum
in Amsterdam.

~~~
douche
I didn't know that abou the Rijksmuseum, that's very cool. Had a lot of fun
spending a day there last year on vacation. Do you know if the ship models are
included?

~~~
severine
[https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio/works-of-
art/ship-...](https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio/works-of-art/ship-
models)

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X86BSD
First I applaud the met for this. Well done!

Sigh, now if only the museums would each stop reinventing the wheel regarding
online virtual museum software, internal asset management, etc and work on an
open source version of said apps. It's so tiresome that there isn't a decent
OS app out there to handle curation, inter museum loans, virtual display of
scanned assets to the public etc. everyone goes off and writes the same apps
over and over and over again and never shares it. They need to get together
and write one OS suite to be shared to all museums.

~~~
brudgers
There are several very rich and rather common semantic standards for
cataloging art and visual artifacts:

CDWA:
[https://www.getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publi...](https://www.getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publications/cdwa/index.html)

VRA:
[https://www.loc.gov/standards/vracore/](https://www.loc.gov/standards/vracore/)

The Getty provides a partial crosswalk:
[https://www.getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publi...](https://www.getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publications/intrometadata/crosswalks.html)

~~~
X86BSD
And which applications are available that use all these "standards"?

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ComodoHacker
I've thought it has something to do with Met-Art at first.

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ashurov
Running on IIS 7? It might be time to upgrade...?!
[http://images.metmuseum.org/](http://images.metmuseum.org/)

