When The Met was founded in 1870, it owned not a single work of art. Through the combined efforts of generations of curators, researchers, and collectors, our collection has grown to represent more than 5,000 years of art from across the globe—from the first cities of the ancient world to the works of our time.
On February 7, 2017, The Met made all images of public-domain works in its collection available under Creative Commons Zero (CC0).
Whether you're an artist or a designer, an educator or a student, a professional or a hobbyist, you now have more than 406,000 images of artworks from The Met collection to use, share, and remix—without restriction. This policy change to Open Access is an important statement about The Met's commitment to increasing access to the collection in a digital age.
