Art Institute of Chicago Scraper - Artworks & Images

Scrape the Art Institute of Chicago collection in bulk. Extract artwork title, artist, date, medium, dimensions, department, origin, public-domain status, credit line and IIIF image URL to CSV/JSON. No API key.

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What does the Art Institute of Chicago Scraper do?

This Actor turns any Art Institute of Chicago search into a structured dataset. You give it across the collection or by search term, it walks the result pages one after another, and it writes one clean row per artwork into your dataset — ready to export as JSON, CSV or Excel, or to pull straight from the Apify API.

The museum publishes its whole collection through a documented, keyless JSON API with a fields parameter, so the Actor requests exactly the columns it maps. Image URLs are built against the museum's IIIF endpoint, which means every row points at a real, downloadable image rather than a thumbnail. Pagination is followed automatically until it runs out of results, hits your page limit or hits your Max items cap, whichever comes first. Every row is de-duplicated across the whole run, so you are never billed twice for the same artwork.

There is no API key, no login and no browser involved. That keeps runs fast and cheap, and it means you can schedule the Actor without worrying about credentials expiring.

Who is it for?

• AI and ML teams assembling image datasets with reliable provenance and licensing.
• Digital humanities researchers analysing a collection at scale.
• Publishers and educators sourcing public-domain artwork legally.
• Cultural-sector developers building discovery tools on open collection data.
• Designers looking for high-resolution reference imagery.

Use cases

• Export the collection filtered to public-domain works for reuse.
• Build an image dataset with artist, date and medium labels.
• Analyse how a department's holdings are distributed by period.
• Search the collection by keyword and export every match.
• Assemble a reference library of high-resolution artwork images.

Why use this Art Institute of Chicago Scraper?

• 🔑 Keyless — no account, no API token, no cookies to paste.
• 📦 16 fields per artwork — everything the result page exposes, already typed.
• 📄 Real pagination — it walks page after page instead of returning the first screen.
• 🎯 Precise caps — Max items stops the run exactly where you want it, so the bill is predictable.
• 📊 Export anywhere — JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, plus the Apify API and integrations.
• 💸 Pay per result — you pay for rows you actually receive, with no platform fees to calculate.

What data can you extract?

Every run produces one row per artwork, with these fields:

Field	Type	Description
artworkId	string	Museum object ID
title	string	Artwork title
artworkUrl	string	Public page for the artwork
artist	string	Primary artist
dateDisplay	string	Date as the museum displays it
medium	string	Medium description
dimensions	string	Dimensions as published
department	string	Museum department
artworkType	string	Object type, e.g. Painting or Print
placeOfOrigin	string	Place of origin
isPublicDomain	boolean	Whether the work is in the public domain
creditLine	string	Credit line for attribution
imageUrl	string	Full-size IIIF image URL
query	string	Search term this row came from
page	number	Result page the artwork appeared on
scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp of extraction

Output example

{
  "artist": "James McNeill Whistler",
  "artworkId": "2848",
  "artworkType": "Drawing and Watercolor",
  "artworkUrl": "https://www.artic.edu/artworks/2848",
  "creditLine": "Gift of John F. O'Connell",
  "dateDisplay": "1855/57",
  "department": "Prints and Drawings",
  "dimensions": "22.4 \u00d7 24 cm (8 7/8 \u00d7 9 1/2 in.)",
  "imageUrl": "https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/15c13ae6-7fe8-d06b-7462-aee0c985b220/full/843,/0/default.jpg",
  "isPublicDomain": true,
  "medium": "Pen and black ink and black watercolor over graphite, with touches of white opaque paint (discolored), on tan laid paper laid down on cream board",
  "page": 1,
  "placeOfOrigin": "United States",
  "query": "whole collection",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-15T07:53:03.059Z",
  "title": "Scene from Bohemian Life"
}

How to use

Option A — across the collection

{
  "maxItems": 1000,
  "maxPagesPerSearch": 10,
  "publicDomainOnly": true,
  "searchTerms": []
}

1. Open the Actor and fill in the across the collection field.
2. Set Max pages per search and Max items to bound the run.
3. Click Start, then export from the Output tab.

Option B — by search term

{
  "maxItems": 500,
  "maxPagesPerSearch": 10,
  "searchTerms": [
    "impressionism"
  ]
}

Paste one or more Art Institute of Chicago URLs into Start URLs and the Actor paginates each of them independently.

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
searchTerms	array	[]	Search the collection.
publicDomainOnly	boolean	false	Keep only artworks the museum marks as public domain.
maxPagesPerSearch	integer	4	How many result pages to walk for each search.
maxItems	integer	150	Stop after this many artworks.
maxConcurrency	integer	2	Parallel requests.
proxyConfiguration	object	{"useApifyProxy": true}	Proxy used to fetch pages.

Tips for best results

• Leave the search term empty to walk the whole collection — the museum publishes over 130,000 objects.
• The API returns up to 100 records per page, so large exports need few requests.
• isPublicDomain is the field that decides whether you can reuse an image; filter on it first.
• imageUrl is a full-size IIIF link — change the size segment if you want smaller files.
• Rows with a null imageUrl have no digitised image, which is normal for parts of any collection.
• department is the cleanest way to slice the collection into coherent subsets.
• Schedule occasional runs; museum collections change slowly compared with commercial data.
• Always keep creditLine with the image if you republish the work.
• Keep Max concurrency low — the API is free and lightly resourced.
• Pair with the Cleveland Museum scraper for a second open-access collection.

Integrations

Send results straight into the tools you already use: Google Sheets, Slack, Zapier, Make, Airtable or any Webhook. You can also schedule the Actor to run hourly, daily or weekly and have each run append to the same dataset, which is how you build a price or availability history rather than a one-off snapshot.

API usage

Run the Actor and collect results from any language. Replace <YOUR_TOKEN> with your Apify API token.

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/logiover~artic-artwork-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"maxItems": 1000, "maxPagesPerSearch": 10, "publicDomainOnly": true, "searchTerms": []}'

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('logiover/artic-artwork-scraper').call({"maxItems": 1000, "maxPagesPerSearch": 10, "publicDomainOnly": true, "searchTerms": []});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('<YOUR_TOKEN>')
run = client.actor('logiover/artic-artwork-scraper').call(run_input={"maxItems": 1000, "maxPagesPerSearch": 10, "publicDomainOnly": true, "searchTerms": []})
for item in client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).iterate_items():
    print(item)

Use with AI agents (MCP)

This Actor is available through the Apify MCP server, so an AI agent can call it as a tool. Point your agent at https://mcp.apify.com and it can run the Art Institute of Chicago Scraper on demand — for example: "Pull the first 500 artworks from Art Institute of Chicago and summarise the price distribution." The agent receives the same structured rows you would get from the UI.

FAQ

Do I need a Art Institute of Chicago account or API key?

No. The Actor reads publicly available pages only. There is nothing to authenticate and no credentials to rotate.

How many artworks can I get in one run?

As many as the search exposes. Raise Max pages per search and Max items together; the run stops at whichever limit it reaches first.

Why did I get fewer rows than I asked for?

The search ran out of artworks. That is normal for narrow queries — broaden the search or add more searches to one run.

Are results de-duplicated?

Yes. Each artwork is emitted once per run, even when it appears on several pages, so you are never billed twice for the same record.

Why are some fields empty?

Art Institute of Chicago does not publish every attribute for every artwork. Empty means the source did not show it, not that extraction failed.

What export formats are supported?

JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML and RSS from the Output tab, plus the Apify API and any integration you connect.

How fast is it?

It is pure HTTP with no browser, so a page of results typically takes a second or two. Raise Max concurrency carefully — the source rate-limits aggressive crawling.

Can I schedule it?

Yes. Use the Apify scheduler to run it on any interval and append each run to the same dataset for time-series analysis.

Does it work behind a proxy?

It uses Apify Proxy automatically. You can switch groups or supply your own proxies in Proxy configuration.

How often does the data change?

Art Institute of Chicago updates continuously. Re-run whenever you need current data; the Actor always reads the live pages, never a cache.

Is the output schema stable?

Yes. Field names and types are fixed, so downstream pipelines will not break between runs.

What if the site changes its layout?

Open an issue on the Issues tab and it gets fixed. The Actor is actively maintained.

Is it legal?

This Actor reads only publicly available pages on Art Institute of Chicago — the same content any visitor sees without logging in. It does not bypass authentication, does not collect private data and does not attempt to defeat access controls. You are responsible for how you use the output: respect the source's terms of service, applicable copyright, and data-protection law such as GDPR where personal data is involved. Scraping public data is generally lawful in the EU and the US, but the responsibility for the downstream use of that data sits with you.

Related scrapers

• Cleveland Museum Scraper — A second open-access collection
• Openverse Scraper — Openly licensed media
• Wikidata Scraper — Structured reference data
• Website Image Extractor — Bulk image extraction