The Smithsonian Institution Makes 2.8 Million High-Quality Images Free For Everyone

The Smithsonian Institution has released 2.8 million high-quality and high-resolution images from its massive collection into the public domain.

Listed under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, the many images are free from any kind of copyright restrictions. What this means, the images that are put online are free for anyone to use and download. The license also makes them free of any republishing restrictions.

Until this time, the images were provided only upon requests for limited usage.

Over the next few months, the Smithsonian aims to add another 200,000 images to the access platform.

The institute said that this collection is merely 2% of its archives as it plans to digitize all of its 155 million items from its database.

The open-access online platform includes 2D and 3D images from its 19 museums, nine research centers, archives, libraries, and the National Zoo.

According to Effie Kapsalis, a Smithsonian’s senior digital program officer:

"Being a relevant source for people who are learning around the world is key to our mission. We can’t imagine what people are going to do with the collections. We’re prepared to be surprised."

The Smithsonian Open Access platform is giving users a taste of its collection, which includes some of the world’s most significant works.

From Degas portrait of Mary Cassatt, an image of a Roman glass bottle dating back to 200 BC, the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington, an early contract for the legendary BB King and orchestra, portraits of Pocahontas and Ida B. Wells, images of Muhammad Ali’s celebrated boxing gear to Amelia Earhart’s flight suit and much more.

[block:block=87]

The Smithsonian Institution is a group of museums and research centers administered by the Government of the United States. Founded on August 10, 1846, it was named after its founding donor, British scientist James Smithson,

Speaking to Smithsonian Magazine, Simon Tanner, a cultural expert at the King’s College, London, who advised on the open-access project of the Smithsonian Institute, said that:

"The sheer scale of this interdisciplinary dataset is astonishing. It opens up a much wider scope of content that crosses science and culture, space and time, in a way that no other collection out there has done, or could possibly even do. This is a staggering contribution to human knowledge."

Previously, Paris Musées which is a consortium of 14 Parisian museums, has started offering 150,000 historic art images available for use entirely free of charge. Google Earth has also released 1,000 new wallpapers captured through satellites for free.

Even Getty Research Institute that has digitized art history books, has made them all available online for free.

The Smithsonian hopes that by making its images more accessible, it will open the museums up to new audiences.