The NYC Museum of Art has released 400,000 digital images to the public

New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has a fairly impressive collection of art stashed away—and now you can download almost 400,000 digital images of its pieces for free. The artworks have been released as Open Access for Scholarly Content which means students, academics, and anyone working on scholarly-like not-for-profit projects can use them free of charge. The collection—which ranges from Rembrandt to obscure Aztec sculpture—is made up of images that the museum feels are in the public domain but aren’t subject to any other copyright restrictions. 

The New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art has made a massive collection of images available to the public domain this month. Bringing 400,000 images – most of which have never been seen on the web before – to the public is a big step for the museum in joining a large cross-section of institutions implementing similar initiatives. “I am delighted that digital technology can open the doors to this trove of images from our encyclopedic collection,” said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This initiative goes by the name “Open Access for Scholarly Content” (OASC). For those of you looking to take a browse of the NYC Met’s collection to find works in the public domain, have a look for the OASC label.