375,000 Images Of The Met's Art Collection Are Now Free To Use

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The Metropolitan Museum of Art took steps Tuesday to become the largest open access art collection in the world. The museum will make 375,000 images of its art collection available for free and unrestricted use in a partnership with Wikimedia Commons and Creative Commons, Met officials announced. For more news about the Met and other Upper East Side news subscribe to Patch's free newsletter and news alerts.

"As of today the Metropolitan Museum of Art is making all images of public domain artworks in the collection available for free and unrestricted use," the Met's director and chief executive Thomas Campbell said during a press conference Tuesday.

The images of the art collection will be available for general, scholarly and even commercial use, Campbell said, calling the new Open Access Initiative an "important step forward," and "quite amazing." Images that will be available for public use include those the museum believes to be in the public domain and those that the museum is waiving its copyrights to.

Images of artworks such as Emanuel Leutze’s "Washington Crossing the Delaware" and Monet from his "Water Lilies," series are included in the 375,000 newly copyright-free gallery, according to a blog post from the museum's new Wikimedian in Residence Richard Knipel.

The Open Access Initiative was announced days after a New York Times report suggested the Met was facing financial woes.

Despite increased attendance and its new Met Breuer facility the Met will be reducing its yearly exhibit total from 60 to 40 and will delay the construction of a $600 million expansion designed by architect David Chipperfield by several years, the New York Times reported.

The report cited increased operations costs — including the opening of Met Breuer — and declining attendance and retail revenues as the source of the museum's financial woes. Despite a record attendance of seven million visitors last year the museum is running close to a $40 million deficit, according to the Times.

Photo by Arad via Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported