375,000 Pieces Of Classic Art Made Available For Free By Met Museum

New York City's famous Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced that 375,000 art pieces out of their immense collection are now available for everyone to use free of charge and without restrictions. It's a continuation of the 2014 initiative Open Access, which allows anyone to access and use images for “any purpose, including commercial and noncommercial use, free of charge and without requiring permission from the Museum.” You'll find anything from famous works by Vincent van Gogh to thousands of years old sculptures. This project is a collaboration with the Creative Commons, a non-profit that promotes legal sharing and distribution of information, ideas, and images through free copyright licenses: “Sharing is fundamental to how we promote discovery, innovation, and collaboration in the digital age,” said Ryan Merkley from Creative Commons. “The Met has given the world a profound gift in service of its mission: the largest encyclopedic art museum in North America has eliminated the barriers that would otherwise prohibit access to its content, and invited the world to use, remix, and share their public-domain collections widely and without restriction.” You can go through the whole collection on the Metropolitan Museum of Art website by choosing “Public Domain Artworks” option under “Show Only.” Or you can browse the Creative Commons website by selecting “Metropolitan Museum of Art” filter. (h/t: mmm)

Study of a Young Woman by Johannes Vermeer (Dutch, Delft 1632–1675 Delft)

Madonna and Childby Duccio di Buoninsegna (Italian, active by 1278–died 1318 Siena)

Reclining Nude by Gustav Klimt (Austrian, Baumgarten 1862–1918 Vienna)

Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat (obverse: The Potato Peeler) by Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, Zundert 1853–1890 Auvers-sur-Oise)

Christ Carrying the Cross by El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos) (Greek, Iráklion (Candia) 1540/41–1614 Toledo)

Print by Utagawa Kunisada (Japanese, 1786–1865)

Sculpture fragment from 6th–4th century B.C.

The Rehearsal of the Ballet Onstage by Edgar Degas (French, Paris 1834–1917 Paris)

Armor by Kunz Lochner (German, Nuremberg, 1510–1567)

The Manneporte (Étretat) by Claude Monet (French, Paris 1840–1926 Giverny)

Armor (Gusoku). Helmet signed by Bamen Tomotsugu (Japanese, Eichizan province, Toyohara, active 18th century)

Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze (American, Schwäbisch Gmünd 1816–1868 Washington, D.C.)