This Smiling Figure from the Remojadas region of Veracruz is a hollow ceramic sculpture representing an individual celebrating with music and dance. (License CC 0, from the Metropolitan Museum.)

It’s a great day for art and the Commons!

Today, the Metropolitan Museum of Art unveiled a new Open Access policy for 375,000 images from their permanent collection – spanning 5,000 years of history, from antiquities to photography, and including images otherwise unavailable to view within the museum itself. These images (and their metadata) are provided under the public domain Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.

Begin to explore the bounty by visiting their Collection page, and selecting the “Public Domain Artworks” filter in the left-hand column.

Learn more about the program, including their partnerships with Artstor, Wikimedia Foundation, Digital Public Library of America, ITHAKA, and Creative Commons, in this Facebook Live video of the announcement.

We look forward to these great artworks enlivening our course home pages, social media posts, and within our course materials. From all of us at MIT OpenCourseWare, and on behalf of our millions of learners around the globe, thank you Met and all those who made this gift possible.