Metropolitan Museum of Art makes over 400,000 works available online

Cuauhtemoctzin, Mexico City / Henri Cartier-Bresson / 1934 (credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Art and photo enthusiasts, this is for you. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the worlds greatest cultural institutions, has made over 400,000 high resolution works from its collection available in the public domain. This includes over 18,000 photographs spanning almost 2 centuries. This is great, as most of the pieces are not on display due to space limitations.

Most of the images are free to use and download where an "OASC" (Open Access for Scholarly Content) logo is shown, as long as the usage falls under the Met's description of scholarly content. Which basically means for educational and research purposes. Anything for commercial use is a very strict no-no. Certain works are not available online due to a variety of reasons, some may still be under copyright or status unclear, restrictions set by the artist, donor or lender, and simply down to a lack of an image of good enough quality.

Below I've included a few samples of the works now available, and you can click here to view the entire collection.

via: The Verge