Getty Museum opens up nearly 88,000 art images for free use

The J. Paul Getty Museum has expanded its free digital archive, including nearly 88,000 new photos and images of artworks. In other words, you can freely download all these images on their Open Content database under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) and use them as you please.

Getty Museum’s Open Content program launched in 2013 when they released digitized works of visual art, art history texts, and art books. The collection has expanded this week, and the number of newly added images is impressive. As I mentioned, the digital archive includes 88,000 new images you can “copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.”

You can “add a print of your favorite Dutch still life to your gallery wall or create a shower curtain using the Irises by Van Gogh,” the Museum suggests. But I’m sure you can go way beyond that. My first thought is to create a custom-made backdrop for photography featuring your favorite artwork. You can recreate and colorize historical photos. These are only some of the ideas from the top of my head, I’m sure you can come up with way more.

The Getty portal interface provides a range of search options, including creation date, medium, object type, and culture, with the ability to search for items dating as far back as 6000 BC. The collection is diverse, encompassing artifacts from a variety of civilizations and historical periods. It includes paintings, sculptures, photos, akroteria, horse trappings, and tweezers, offering something for everyone to discover.

As always, I searched for “Serbia” to see what the collection contains from my country. I found this photo of process Julija Obrenović by an unknown photographer, taken between the 1860s and 1870s.

Enjoy exploring Getty’s Open Content database, and below you’ll find some other resources with free images, sound clips, and books.

[via PetaPixel]