New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art releases 375,000 digital works for remix and re-use online via CC0

Open Access |  Digital Humanities | Art

Jennie Rose Halperin | Feburary 7, 2017

Today, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announces that all public domain images in its collection will be shared under CC0, expanding their digital collection by over 375,000 images as well as providing data on over 420,000 museum objects spanning more than 5,000 years. CC0 allows anyone to use, re-use, and remix a work without restriction. This announcement will shape the future of public domain images online and underscores the Met’s leadership role as one of the most important open museum collections in the world.

Creative Commons CEO Ryan Merkley joined the Met to announce the release. The Met collection of CC0 images can be browsed on the new CC Search beta, also announced this morning.

“Sharing is fundamental to how we promote discovery, innovation, and collaboration in the digital age,” said Merkley. “Today, The Met has given the world a profound gift in service of its mission: the largest museum in the United States has eliminated the barriers that would otherwise prohibit access to its content, and invited the world to use, remix, and share their public domain collections widely and without restriction.” Read more...

The Fabric of Memory: Preserving Met Opera History Friday, March 04, 2016 - 10:58 AM By Fred Plotkin

The Metropolitan Opera archivist Robert Tuggle (Jonathan Tichler/Metropolitan Opera)

I am often asked who is the Belmont for whom the Belmont Room on the Metropolitan Opera’s Grand Tier is named. This is where donors at a certain level to the Opera Guild go for coffee and conversation before performances and during intermissions. A painting there by Simon Elvis of a warmly elegant lady depicts Eleanor Robson Belmont (1879-1979), who was the first woman on the board of directors of the Met and was crucial in creating the Metropolitan Opera Guild in 1935.

Mrs. Belmont always sat in box 4 in the Golden Horseshoe at the old Met. When the company was in its most parlous financial condition in the early 1930s, she raised $300,00 to create the guild. In 1940, it was she who had the idea to cut up the gold silk curtain at the old Met and have the pieces stitched to make handbags, bookmarks, eyeglass cases and other items whose sale raised $11,000.

Mrs. Belmont proudly declared that, with the establishment of the guild, “democratization of opera has begun!” In the spring of 1936 she hired Mary Ellis Peltz, whom she described as a “gifted walking encyclopedia of opera” to edit the newsletter that would become Opera News. Mrs. Peltz also created educational programs, a lecture series and backstage tours. She edited the magazine until 1957, at which point she initiated the Metropolitan Opera archives and was its director until her death in 1981. They were then headed by Robert Tuggle, who died on Jan. 24 at the age of 83. Read more...