How to use these pictures

Every picture in this collection is free to copy, whether the project is personal or commercial. A museum has marked the file public domain or CC0, or the photograph is a United States government work from NASA. You do not have to pay, and you do not have to write for permission. Credit is not required. It is still worth naming the artist and the museum when you can.

Public Domain and CC0

Public domain means no copyright remains. For a NASA photograph, U.S. copyright never applied in the first place. CC0 is a waiver a museum attaches when it wants no copyright left on its own photograph of an old work. Cleveland, and the Smithsonian and Paris Musées pictures here, are marked CC0. In ordinary use inside the United States, the result is the same: you can copy the file. If the work will be published in another country, read the museum’s record. Copyright terms are not identical everywhere.

Read the date and the medium

The Scream files on this site are the 1895 lithographs. The Potato Eaters file is the 1885 print. The date and the medium under each picture tell you which one you have.

Using One as a Reference

A wave, a wheat field, a wallpaper repeat, a glacier: download the file and work beside it. Wall art, a background texture, a new composite — the picture you make from that reference is yours. A photograph you found on a museum website, and that is not in this collection, is a different question. Old art and a free photo of that art are not always the same thing.