Search artworksSearch The Met's collection of more than 500,000 objects. Every filter is optional and they combine: narrow by department, medium or object type, where the work comes from, and when it was made, and keep only the museum's highlights, the works on view, or the ones it has photographed. Returns the artworks themselves, not just ID numbers, with the total number of matches and the offset for the next page.
Get an artworkFetch one object's full record by its Met ID number: title, artist and their dates, department, culture and period, when it was made, medium and dimensions, credit line, subject tags, whether it is on view and in which gallery, and links to its images and its page on metmuseum.org.
Get artworks by IDFetch several objects at once by their Met ID numbers, in one step instead of one per artwork. IDs the museum does not have are reported back under 'missing_object_ids' rather than failing the step.
List departmentsList The Met's curatorial departments with their ID numbers: Egyptian Art, European Paintings, Arms and Armor and the rest. Every action that takes a department offers these as a dropdown, so this is mainly for a workflow that needs to loop over them.
Browse a departmentPage through everything one department holds, without a search term. Returns the artworks along with how many the department has in total and the offset for the next page.
List recently updated artworksList the objects whose catalogue record The Met has revised on or after a date: new photography, a re-attributed artist, a corrected date. This is how a workflow keeps a copy of the collection in step with the museum's own edits without re-reading all 500,000 records.
Find artworks by artistList the works one artist made. The Met's own search matches titles and descriptions as well as artist names, so this action checks who is actually credited on each result and keeps only the real matches: searching 'Rembrandt' returns his etchings, not every print that mentions him. Works with a surname on its own as well as a full name.
List collection highlightsList the works The Met itself flags as highlights: the selected pieces representing different cultures and periods across the permanent collection. With nothing filled in this is the museum-wide list; add a department or a few words to narrow it.
Find artworks on viewList works hanging in the galleries right now, each with the gallery number to find it in, plus the set of galleries the results are spread across. This is the visit-planning counterpart to Search artworks, which also covers the works in storage.
Get artwork imagesList every picture The Met publishes for an object (the main photograph and any additional views), each as a direct URL, with the credit line and any reuse terms. Pick a size to get that one URL on its own, ready to hand to a download step. Pictures are published only for works released under Open Access; for anything else the list comes back empty and 'is_public_domain' says why.
