NEW YORK, NY.- The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today the launch of The Met Collection API (application programming interface), which builds on the Open Access program announced in 2017 and enables any third party to sustainably integrate The Met collection into their website, ensuring up-to-date versions of images and data are available to users. The Open Access program makes all Creative Commons Zero (CC0) data and some 406,000 images of over 205,000 CC0 objects from The Met collection available for use without restriction. Additionally, the first implementation of The Met Collection API is with long-time partner Google, via Google Arts & Culture.

"The new Met Collection API further enables the Museum to connect its vast resources with our audiences on a global scale, which is absolutely fundamental to our mission as an encyclopedic museum in the 21st century," said Max Hollein, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "As a next step in our Open Access program, it ensures that the most current collection images and data are accessible and available to the public and our partners, making The Met collection one of the most discoverable and useful on the internet."

With the launch of this first version of The Met Collection API, hundreds of thousands of images and data are available under CC0. The Met Collection API supports increased accessibility and allows individuals, engineers, developers, researchers, and creators to connect with The Met's objects.

"The Met Collection API is where all makers, creators, researchers, and dreamers can now connect with the most up-to-date data and images from over 205,000 works in The Met collection, representing 5,000 years of history," said Loic Tallon, The Met's Chief Digital Officer. "We want the Museum's incredible artworks to exist on websites where people already go to get their doses of creativity and knowledge, which is why partnerships are now a core component of The Met's digital program and we're so thrilled to team up with Google."

In partnership with Google, The Met Collection API connects Google Arts & Culture to all CC0 works in the Museum's collection—growing The Met's presence on Google Arts & Culture from 757 artworks, which have been manually uploaded over seven years, to 205,000 digitized, high-resolution images of public domain works. The Met and Google Arts & Culture collaborated so users can easily download a high-res image from The Met collection, or learn more through a link that takes visitors back to the Museum's website for more detail on a Met collection page.

"The Met was one of our very first innovation partners at Google Arts & Culture and we've been collaborating on many projects since then. When The Met approached us with this new idea, we were thrilled to help them execute their vision to find new ways to make their uniquely rich and extensive collection accessible and engaging around the world," said Amit Sood, Director, Google Arts & Culture.

As The Met digitizes new public domain works and as they enter the public domain each year, they will be automatically added to Google Arts & Culture. The collection will also be integrated into the Google Knowledge Graph, ensuring The Met's collection is discoverable via Google Search and increasing access and engagement. Through The Met Collection API and partnership with Google, 205,000 images will be available for integration into the Knowledge Graph (an increase from eight works currently available).

A next step—key to the launch—is to demonstrate the value of making this knowledge and data available. Recently, Data Visualization students at The New School's Parsons School of Design experimented with the new data set. Links to individual experiments can be found on The Met's blog.