Do you dislike AI art? And are you disappointed with the search engine results you see when you search for photographs and artworks? If so, this is the video for you. In this narrated video essay, you will be walked through the process of searching for free, reusable, merchandisable Public Domain art that can be used in your projects. In a step-by-step process, we will go through tips, tricks, and best practices about finding and safely downloading Public Domain Art. A general overview of the search process will be given, as will several specific examples. These include searching for ancient Greek pottery art on the Metropolitan Museum of Art website, browsing for images of Plato in the Rijksmuseum collection, obtaining a painting of cavalry from the National Museum in Warsaw, finding a saga illustration from the National Museum in Stockholm, and selecting a kingly scene from the Art Institute of Chicago. Enjoy the art journey!
Video Chapters
00:00 AI, Search Engines & Aggregators
01:32 Museum, Gallery & Library Websites
07:01 MET example
08:02 Rijksmuseum example
09:09 MNW example
10:00 National Museum Stockholm example
11:01 ARTIC example
11:55 Europeana
13:28 The Historian’s Hut example
15:03 Outro
[Video Script]
So, you’re working on a project and need some free, reusable, merchandisable or monetizable art. What do you do? These days, people may be tempted to ask their favorite AI app to find what they need. Or, they may even ask AI to generate an image of what they have in mind. Yet, the AI search results and the generated image will likely be less than satisfactory, and the use of AI art is a topic rife with ethical concerns. A few years back, before the AI boom, you might have just attempted to Google the subject you were looking for, maybe toggling on the Creative Commons license filter option on the search engine and browsing through the results. You could, indeed, find decent art options that way, but still not the best. In the results, you would see Wikimedia entries, but the rights and licensing can be dubious there. You could also find options from image aggregators, like Picryl and Alamy, that collect licensable images from the internet and try to resell them to you in exchange for payment or donations. But their details are often sparse, and the pictures you are looking for may be covered in watermarks or locked behind a paywall. Yet, there is a secret that the aggregators don’t want you to know. The secret is that many of the paintings, prints, old photographs and other antique artworks that the aggregator sites try to sell you are actually in the public domain and can be found freely available for download, without watermarks or paywalls, on other reputable sites of the internet. The key is to skip the aggregators, cutting out the middleman, and head straight to the museum websites.
As a historian who has been posting content on the internet for years, I frequently browse the online collections of museums, libraries, archives, and other similar institutions from all over the world. For every Article I post, any Quote Picture I release, every History Picture I describe, and each YouTube video I publish, I delve into the collections hosted by institutions of art and history and find applicable public domain artworks for my projects. Suffice it to say, after doing this for years, I have become very familiar with these kinds of websites.
Almost all major art museums have accessible public websites, and most have some sort of browsable art collection or gallery that is available online. Though some museum webpages are more user-friendly than others, and their layouts can differ greatly, you can generally find their galleries by locating the museum website’s art section and clicking on an option that makes some reference to searching their collection. If the museum site you are browsing is not in your native language, many museum websites have built-in language settings, where it will auto-translate the site into your language of choice. For example, let’s look at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. By default, it’s an English language website, but in the top right corner, there is an option to switch the site to a different language. The same is true for many other regional museums, such as the Rijksmuseum of the Netherlands, which also has a language selection option, including English. In both of these examples, to find their art galleries, you just navigate to their collection pages. The Rijksmuseum website is straightforward—just click “Collection” and start searching away. On the MET museum site, select “Art” on their menu, and then click on “The MET Collection,” then you can start searching for artworks from there. That is the general pathway to search for art on most museum websites. You can also Google the specific page you are looking for, using search phrases like “MET collection,” or “Rijksmuseum collection,” and the right page should be one of the first options presented.
Now, arriving at the museum collection page and actually browsing it are two separate matters. If you are looking for public domain art that can be reused, monetized or marketed, you need to take a few extra steps. First and foremost, you will want to select options and filters that will make the museum site display public domain or non-copyrighted images. You will also want to familiarize yourself with the locations on the site where each artwork’s copyright designation is clearly written out and defined. In the case of the MET and the Rijksmuseum, they plainly state which of their artworks are public domain. On Rijksmuseum, select an artwork and scroll down to “view all data.” Then, keep scrolling to the section labeled “Acquisition and rights” and then “copyright.” On Rijksmuseum, you want to see that the copyright line states that the artwork is “Public Domain.” As for the MET, that website has some easier browsing options. The collection homepage has a “Public Domain Images” section that you can click, and if you happened to skip that step you can toggle on the option, “Has Open Access image,” after you begin searching the collection on their website. These Open Access images are generally public domain, but after selecting an artwork on the MET website, look under the picture of the artwork and double-check to make sure the artwork is listed as “Public Domain.” There should be a symbol in front of the Public Domain text to designate that the artwork falls under the MET’s “Open Access policy,” which allows copying, modification and distribution of designated images, even for commercial purposes. Museums like the MET, the Rijksmuseum, and other similarly-minded institutions will usually provide a free, no-hassle download option for the public domain artworks on their museum collection pages. Sometimes, an artwork listing on a museum website will have multiple photographs, and in that grouping of photos, some images will be public domain while others may still be in copyright. In those cases, just pay attention to the fine print, and download the specific image that is labeled as Public Domain and that has a download option presented by the museum.
In addition to providing clear rights information and download options, many museum websites have fairly in-depth filtering capabilities that you can use while searching the collections. For the copyright concern, many websites allow you to easily search for only public domain art, similarly to how the MET allows you to filter for its Open Access images. You can also tell many museum collection pages that you want to search only for a specific type of art, such as paintings, photographs, prints, sculptures, etcetera. These options are usually listed under selectable categories labeled as “object types,” or some similar designation. Additionally, most museums allow you to narrow down your search to specific time periods, geographical regions, or specialty departments. All you have to do is select the filter options that will provide the best results for the type of art you want to find, and then start scrolling through what the museums have to offer.
Here are a few examples:
Let’s say I want to find ancient Greek pottery art for an article I’m working on. This is how I would search for it on the Metropolitan Museum of Art Website. First, go to the Met Museum website, click the Art menu and select the The Met Collection option. Next, scroll down and click Public Domain Images. Then, on the search page, type in the keyword Greek (or some other applicable word for ancient Greek pottery art, such as amphora or Attic). This will already generate some good results, but maybe I’ll throw on an Object Type or Material filter. How about clay? And with that, the Met website will present me with a list of public domain clay artworks related to Greece. Click on something you like, and a page will appear where a picture of the art will be prominent. Under the picture is the public domain designation, and on the opposite side of the picture is the download button.
For another example, maybe I want an illustration of Plato from the Rijksmuseum. Just go to the museum website, make sure you toggle on your preferred language, then click “collection” and type in the name Plato at the search bar. With the results loaded, select an image that looks good, scroll down to click on the “View all data” option, and double-check down at the “Acquisition and rights” section to make sure that the art is public domain. There is a download option in the data section, and you can also go back up to the “+” button on the main display area to find a second download method. Backtracking to the search page, maybe you want a specific type of art. Perhaps a sculpture? Then click on the button beside the search bar and select the “OBJECT TYPE” option. In this case, sculpture is not listed by default, but I can type it in manually, click the sculpture tag that appears, and that will make the site only show me sculptures relating to Plato. From there, just do the previous steps of checking to make sure your chosen sculpture is public domain.
If, per se, I want a painting of cavalry from the National Museum in Warsaw, I would go to their website, click the MENU button and choose the CATALOG option. From there I’d select “more filters,” go to the copyrights dropdown menu, and scroll down to find Public domain. If I search the term, cavalry, the site should keep those filter options and present me with search results that are public domain. With the results showing, I can then go to the “object type” option and select something like “painting” or one of the oil or pastel options. I’ll choose painting for now, and select an option that looks good. If you hover over the “c” symbol, it should tell you that the artwork is public domain, and right above that symbol is the download button.
For the next hypothetical, how about using the National Museum in Stockholm to find an illustration or painting relating to an Icelandic saga. In that case, I would go to their website, click on the search button, then choose their “Search the collections” option. From there, make sure your preferred language is selected, then enter your search in the search area. I’ll type in saga as the keyword. Some decent options will already be presented as is, but if you want to narrow it down to paintings, I can click “Advanced search,” then go to “Technique” and choose painting. With the results provided, click the preferred painting, and check the fine print underneath the image. If it says “Public Domain,” you should be able to click on the picture and a download option should be available. Another way to browse their site is to go back to the home page, choose “Explore art and design” and select the “Get images” section. There, they have links to their media portal and their Wikimedia page, though these are not as easy to navigate.
For my last example, perhaps the Art Institute of Chicago can provide me an artwork for a kingly scene. I’ll go to the museum website, click the “Art & Artists” option, then type in my king keyword. From there, I’ll click “Show Filters” and scroll down to check the “Public domain” option. With that, it should reload the page and only show public domain artworks relating to kings. The results should be fair as is, but I could also go over and choose “ARTWORK TYPE” and “Painting” for a more narrow list of results. Click your favorite artwork and you should see wording saying “CC0 Public Domain Designation,” and on the opposite side there should be a download option.
By utilizing open and accessible museums such as these, you can find all the free, re-usable, public domain art you could need. But there are some additional options that can help you search faster. Rather than use aggregators with watermarked or paywalled images, or those sites that provide public domain pictures without any information about the artwork’s origin, I would instead suggest using official archives and databases that work with museums. One great example is the European Union’s Europeana website. This helpful site combines the collections of many European museums and institutions, presenting a great bulk of European art in a single searchable database. Unfortunately, the filtering options on the site are not as easy to use as many of the individual museum websites, but you can still do the essential basics, such as filtering for only public domain results. To do this, you enter your search on Europeana, then click on “ADDITIONAL FILTERS” and scroll down to “RIGHTS STATEMENT,” then select “Public Domain Mark” as your option. It is also good to know that Europeana supports Boolean operators (like capitalized AND, OR, and NOT), which helps focus in on specific searches; like, for example, using the search phrase, “Painting AND Roman,” which will produce results with both keywords. Europeana clearly lists where each artwork on the site originated and you can go directly to that museum’s website by clicking on the option that says “View on the providing institution’s website.” Sites like Europeana, therefore, are also a good way to find individual museums that host freely-usable public domain art.
It would also be remiss of me to not give my own website a shoutout. As I said earlier, every single one of my posts uses public domain or re-usable art. Every quote features a public domain image—you can find the art attribution on the quote picture, itself, written as fine print at the bottom of the image. Each Article and Did You Know is headed by a public domain artwork, and you can scroll down to the end of the piece to find the “Picture Attribution,” that lists out what the artwork is and where it came from. Of particular note for art is my History Pictures section, a gallery of various artworks, where you can read descriptions about the historical inspirations for each piece of art. If you click History Pictures on the main menu, you will see my disclaimer that “All images featured on our History Pictures page are in the Public Domain or have no known rights restrictions, unless specified in the accompanying article.” The providing institution of each History Picture artwork is always listed last in the respective article sources section. To filter your search results on my website, just enter your query into the search bar, and after you obtain your initial results, find the “Filter Options” section (which is right under the search bar on computer and at the bottom of your search results on mobile), and click on a category, such as History Pictures. Using this method, you could search the term “Rome” and then toggle on the filter for the “History Pictures” category, and that would give you a list of History Pictures on the subject of Rome. Just give a shout-out to The Historian’s Hut if you decide to download a picture from the website.
Through means such as these, you can obtain free, reusable, monetizable, and merchandisable real art without any need for AI or AI generation. By obtaining your art and assets in this way, you will be supporting the legacy of real art, and real artists, while giving some traffic to the prestigious art institutions that go out of their way to give us access to their digitized masterpieces. It should also be mentioned that, if you have the resources, you can also commission art directly from a modern artist, who would probably appreciate the patronage. Whatever your choice, enjoy the real art that humans have created.
Institutions mentioned:
- https://www.metmuseum.org/
- https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en
- https://cyfrowe.mnw.art.pl/en/home
- https://www.nationalmuseum.se/en/
- https://www.artic.edu/
- https://www.europeana.eu/en
Video music info:
Josef Suk, Serenade, Op 6 – A Far Cry
All of the artworks used in the video were labeled as Public Domain, Open Access, Free Use, Creative Commons or subject to Fair Use at the time of the video’s creation.
