Art Masterpieces App Launches

The "Art Masterpieces" app is built upon The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Open Access initiative, which began in February 2017. This policy released all images of public-domain artworks in the museum's collection for unrestricted public use under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. This means anyone can use, share, and remix these images for any purpose, including commercial use, without needing to ask for permission. The Met's Open Access collection now contains over 492,000 high-resolution images. The program was designed to make the museum's vast collection, spanning 5,000 years of world culture, accessible to a global audience in the digital age. Within six months of its launch, The Met's website saw a 64% increase in image downloads and a 17% rise in traffic to its online collection. The app, developed by Caner Kenan Ozdemir, utilizes The Met's public API (Application Programming Interface) to deliver this content to users. While this specific app is an unofficial project, The Met encourages such developments to foster new ways for the public to engage with its collection. This approach has led to a variety of creative uses, from educational tools to social media projects. The "Art Masterpieces" app joins a growing ecosystem of digital art platforms. For comparison, the Artify app offers access to over 200,000 masterpieces, while Google Arts & Culture partners with over 2,000 institutions, providing access to more than 200,000 images of artworks alongside millions of other cultural artifacts.