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Art Institute of Chicago API

Searchable museum collection with IIIF images and CC0 works, no key

The Art Institute of Chicago API is a keyless REST/JSON service over the museum's public collection data, with full-text and faceted search, IIIF image manifests, and tens of thousands of public-domain (CC0) images. No registration or key is required. It is well documented and supports filtering results to public-domain works.

Free tier

Free, no key; courtesy AIC-User-Agent header requested

Rate limits

Anonymous throttle ~60 requests/minute per IP; send an AIC-User-Agent with contact info (email [email protected] for higher limits)

Auth

No key

Base URL

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1

What you'd build with it

  • Build art-discovery features with high-quality IIIF imagery
  • Source CC0 fine-art images for generated content
  • Faceted museum-data exploration as an agent tool

Key endpoints

  • GET/artworks/searchFull-text search over artworks (?q=)
  • GET/artworks/{id}Get a single artwork with metadata and image_id
  • GET/artworksList/paginate artworks with field selection
Members

Members get the runnable recipe

Sign in free to copy the example request, see a sample response, and read the gotchas.

Tags

artimagespublic-domainmuseumiiif