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# Metropolitan Museum of Art Releases 400,000 Images, with Restriction
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/metropolitan-museum-of-art-releases-400000-images-with-restriction/
- Published: 2014-05-19T19:04:12.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:33:28.000Z
- Description: Late last Friday, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it has made 400,000 images of artworks in its collection available for free download — but the move comes with a major caveat: the images are only intended for noncommercial, scholarly use.
- Author: Jillian Steinhauer
- Tags: Opinion, Copyright, Metropolitan Museum of Art, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:03 (2014, 2015, part 1)

![Two Met images now available for free scholarly use: (left) Johannes Vermeer, "Study of a Young Woman" (c. 1665–67), oil on canvas 17 1/2 x 15 3/4 in (44.5 x 40 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, in memory of Theodore Rousseau, Jr., 1979 (1979.396.1); (right) Head of the god Amun (c. 1336–1327 BCE), Egyptian, New Kingdom, Post-Amarna Period, granodiorite, 44 cm (17 5/16 in) x 38.2 (15 1/16 in) x 41.5 (16 5/16 in), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1907 (07.228.34) (both images © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2014/05/met-images-release.jpg)

Two Met images now available for free scholarly use: (left) Johannes Vermeer, “Study of a Young Woman” (c. 1665–67), oil on canvas, 17 1/2 x 15 3/4 in (44.5 x 40 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, in memory of Theodore Rousseau, Jr., 1979 (1979.396.1); (right) Head of the god Amun (c. 1336–1327 BCE), Egyptian, New Kingdom, Post-Amarna Period, granodiorite, 44 cm (17 5/16 in) x 38.2 (15 1/16 in) x 41.5 (16 5/16 in), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1907 (07.228.34) (both images © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Late last Friday, the Metropolitan Museum of Art [announced](http://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-museum/press-room/news/2014/oasc-access?ref=hyperallergic.com) that it has made 400,000 images of artworks in its collection available for free download — but the move comes with a major caveat: the images are only intended for noncommercial, scholarly use.

The new initiative, titled Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC), provides easy access to high-resolution images of hundreds of thousands of pieces in the Met’s collection that are believed to be in the public domain and free of copyright restrictions. Available files now have a small OASC marking underneath the image on its online collection page, as well as a download arrow. New images will be added “on a regular basis,” according to the [press release](http://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-museum/press-room/news/2014/oasc-access?ref=hyperallergic.com).

But unlike the Getty Museum’s big [image release](http://hyperallergic.com/78638/getty-museum-sets-4600-images-free/) last summer or the Wellcome Library’s [earlier this year](https://hyperallergic.com/grotesque-and-gorgeous-100000-art-and-medicine-images-released-for-open-use/), both of which allow for commercial use, the Met images are meant for only scholarly use. The museum [defines this as](http://www.metmuseum.org/research/image-resources/frequently-asked-questions?ref=hyperallergic.com) “scholarly publication in all media,” including:

> All school and academic work … , conference proceedings, journal articles, essays in Festschrifts, museum exhibition catalogues, non-commercially produced textbooks and educational materials, books published by university presses or the academic/scholarly imprint of commercial publishers, self-published books, and documentary films.

That designation omits a wide swath of people, namely artists, writers, filmmakers, and any one else working commercially (e.g. this blogazine; I had to obtain special permission to use images for this post). And the exception is particularly frustrating given the copyright-free nature of the work in question — we’re not talking about the [thornier questions](http://hyperallergic.com/tag/cariou-v-prince/) that come with pictures of copyrighted contemporary art. The Met’s image release is a welcome and vital move towards encouraging [fair use](https://hyperallergic.com/are-art-professionals-afraid-of-fair-use/), but it’s more like a cautious tread than a full step.