Museum Open-Access Artworks – Art Institute of Chicago & Cleveland

Search public-domain/CC0 artworks from two major museum APIs: title, artist, date, medium, dimensions, department and high-resolution image URL.

Why this actor

• CC0-only filter for commercial reuse.
• Pay only for results: $0.50 per 1,000 artworks, no start fee, failed lookups are free.
• Robust: automatic retries with exponential backoff, respects Retry-After, per-item error rows instead of crashed runs.
• Clean, flat JSON/CSV/Excel output ready for Google Sheets, Make, Zapier, n8n, Clay, or the Apify API.

Use cases

• Print-on-demand and design (public domain)
• Education apps
• Art datasets

How to use Museum Open

1. Configure queries, museums, onlyPublicDomain in the Input tab (or leave the prefilled sample values to test immediately).
2. Optionally set maxItems to cap the number of results and control spend.
3. Click Start and export structured results as JSON, CSV, Excel, or connect directly via API / MCP / n8n / Make.

Input

Field	Type	Description
queries	array	Artist, subject or keyword.
museums	array	Open-access collections.
onlyPublicDomain	boolean	Images free for commercial reuse.
maxPerMuseum	integer	Cap.
maxItems	integer	0 = no limit. Caps cost.

Example input:

{
  "queries": [
    "sunflowers"
  ]
}

Output

Each dataset item looks like this (real sample from a test run, long fields trimmed):

{
  "query": "monet",
  "museum": "Art Institute of Chicago",
  "id": 16568,
  "title": "Water Lilies",
  "artist": "Claude Monet (French, 1840\u20131926)",
  "date": "1906",
  "medium": "Oil on canvas",
  "dimensions": "89.9 \u00d7 94.1 cm (35 3/8 \u00d7 37 1/16 in.); Framed: 103.2 \u00d7 107 \u00d7 5.8 cm (40 5/8 \u00d7 42 1/8 \u00d7 2 1/4 in.)",
  "department": "Painting and Sculpture of Europe",
  "origin": "France",
  "classification": "oil on canvas",
  "publicDomain": true,
  "imageUrl": "https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/3c27b499-af56-f0d5-93b5-a7f2f1ad5813/full/843,/0/default.jpg",
  "url": "https://www.artic.edu/artworks/16568",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-10-15T00:09:09+00:00"
}

Rows that could not be processed contain an error field and are not charged.

Extracted output fields

Every dataset row includes structured fields ready for spreadsheets, CRMs, and AI pipelines:

• Fields: query, museum, id, title, artist, date, medium, dimensions, department, origin, classification, publicDomain, imageUrl, url, fetchedAt

Comparison: Museum Open vs alternatives

Feature	This Actor (shawndunn/museum-open-access-artworks)	Typical alternatives
Pricing model	$0.50 / 1,000 results, $0.00 start fee	$20–$49/mo subscription or per-run start fees
Failed / error lookups	$0.00 (never charged)	Often billed by compute time even on failures
API keys / proxies required	None (works out of the box)	Often requires paid third-party keys or residential proxies
AI Agent & MCP ready	Yes (mcp.apify.com compatible, optional defaults)	Strict required schemas that reject agent calls

Pricing

Pay-per-event: $0.0005 per artwork (= $0.50 / 1,000). Use Max results to cap spend. Apify's free plan credit covers thousands of results per month.

Integrations & API

Run on a schedule in Apify Console, call via the Apify API / Python & JS clients, or connect to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, Slack and webhooks. Works as a tool for AI agents via Apify MCP.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Museum Open is configured for zero-config AI agent tool use via the Apify MCP Server (no required-field blocking on defaulted inputs).

Streamable HTTP endpoint:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=shawndunn/museum-open-access-artworks

Claude Desktop / Cursor / Windsurf mcpServers config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify-museum-open-access-artworks": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=shawndunn/museum-open-access-artworks",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer <YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Direct synchronous API call:

POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/shawndunn~museum-open-access-artworks/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>

FAQ

Is this an official tool? No. It is an independent actor and is not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by the data source or any trademark owner named here.

Is it legal? The actor only reads publicly available data from public endpoints, without logins, and does not bypass paywalls or access controls. You are responsible for using the data in line with applicable laws (e.g. GDPR) and the source sites' terms.

Something broke? Open an issue in the Issues tab; we typically respond within 24 hours and ship fixes fast.

More tools by shawndunn

• Steam Store Game Details, Prices & Review Scores (Bulk) — Bulk Steam game data: price and discount per country, developers, publishers, release date, genres, categories, platforms ($1.
• Wikipedia Pageviews: Article Traffic Time Series & Daily Top 1000 — Daily or monthly pageviews for any Wikipedia article in any language (Wikimedia API), bot-filtered, by device, or one summary ($0.
• Wikipedia Article Extractor: Clean Text, Categories, Wikidata ID — Get clean plain text (intro or full article) for Wikipedia articles in any language, plus categories, Wikidata ID, short ($0.
• Wikidata Entity Lookup & SPARQL Runner — Look up entities by name or Q-id and get every property with human-readable labels (not raw P/Q codes), or run any SPARQL SELECT ($0.
• Open Library Books Search & ISBN Lookup — Search 30M+ books on Open Library or bulk-lookup ISBNs: title, authors, first publish year, editions, ISBNs, publishers ($0.