Metropolitan Museum of Art API

Overview

Measurement Record

What actually happened when we called this API from our own infrastructure. Every value below was recorded by the request, not copied from the provider's documentation.

Request

GET https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/public/collection/v1/objects/436535

Result

HTTP 200 · application/json · 2,794 bytes · compressed

Response time

363 ms (median of 3) · fastest 355 ms

Transport

TLSv1.3 · TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 · certificate issued by DigiCert Inc

Browser CORS

Allowed — Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

Recorded

2026-08-10

Fields Returned

Top-level fields present in the response we captured, with the type and value we actually received.

Captured Response

Captured from a real request to https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/public/collection/v1/objects/436535 on 2026-08-10. Long arrays and nested objects are truncated to keep the shape readable.

{
  "objectID": 436535,
  "isHighlight": true,
  "accessionNumber": "1993.132",
  "accessionYear": "1993",
  "isPublicDomain": true,
  "primaryImage": "https://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/ep/original/DP-42549-001.jpg",
  "primaryImageSmall": "https://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/ep/web-large/DP-42549-001.jpg",
  "additionalImages": [
    "https://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/ep/original/LC-EP_1993_132_suppl_CH-004.jpg"
  ],
  "constituents": [
    {
      "constituentID": 161947,
      "role": "Artist",
      "name": "Vincent van Gogh",
      "constituentULAN_URL": "http://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500115588",
      "constituentWikidata_URL": "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5582",
      "gender": ""
    }
  ],
  "department": "European Paintings",
  "objectName": "Painting",
  "title": "Wheat Field with Cypresses",
  "culture": "",
  "period": "",
  "…": "(43 more fields)"
}

Implementation Example

Calls a real endpoint of this API. Replace any placeholder credentials with your own key.

const url = "https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/public/collection/v1/objects/436535";
const response = await fetch(url);
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${response.status}`);
const data = await response.json();
console.log(data);

import requests

url = "https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/public/collection/v1/objects/436535"
headers = {}

response = requests.get(url, headers=headers, timeout=30)
response.raise_for_status()
data = response.json()
print(data)

curl 'https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/public/collection/v1/objects/436535'

What Can You Build?

// Fetch art collection data
const response = await fetch(`https://metmuseum.github.io`);
const data = await response.json();
const items = Array.isArray(data) ? data : data.data || [data];
items.slice(0, 5).forEach(item => {
  console.log('Artwork:', item.title || item.name || item);
});

// Get design resources from Metropolitan Museum of Art
const response = await fetch(`https://metmuseum.github.io`);
const data = await response.json();
console.log('Design resource:', data);
const container = document.getElementById('design-display');
container.innerHTML = `<pre>${JSON.stringify(data, null, 2)}</pre>`;

// Fetch random art for inspiration
async function getInspiration() {
  const response = await fetch(`https://metmuseum.github.io`);
  return await response.json();
}
const artwork = await getInspiration();
console.log('Inspiration:', artwork);
document.getElementById('board').innerHTML =
  JSON.stringify(artwork, null, 2);

Note: These code examples are AI-generated and unverified. Always refer to the official API documentation for accurate usage.

How This API Fails

We deliberately sent this API a broken request and recorded exactly what came back on 2026-08-10. Knowing the shape of an error before you hit it makes error handling much easier to write.

{
  "message": "could not parse objectID"
}

Common Errors & Troubleshooting

Generated guidance based on this API's documentation, not observed by us. Treat it as a starting point and check against the provider's own error reference.