Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced this week its adoption of a new policy: all photographs of public-domain artworks in the Museum’s collection are now available for free and unrestricted use. The Met’s Open Access policy facilitates the use of more than 375,000 images of public-domain artworks for both scholarly and commercial purposes. To maximize the reach of The Met’s Open Access initiative, the Museum announced its new partnerships with Creative Commons, Wikimedia, Artstor, Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Art Resource, and Pinterest.
What makes the Met’s announcement unique is these partnerships, which are designed to disseminate the artworks in the collection to the widest possible audience . Rather than having to come directly to the museum’s website, art lovers will now be able to find items from the Met collection at sites they already frequent, such as Wikimedia Commons and Pinterest.
The Museum also welcomes its first Wikimedian-in-Residence, Richard Knipel, who will collaborate with Wikimedians around the world to bring images of public-domain artworks into Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia, and diverse GLAM-Wiki initiatives.
Access to the collection can be found at the following address:
