aid: art-institute-of-chicago name: Art Institute of Chicago description: >- The Art Institute of Chicago publishes an open, REST + Elasticsearch-style Public API for ~120,000 artworks plus agents (artists/makers), places, galleries, exhibitions, tours, mobile sounds, museum-shop products, publications, sections, sites, educator resources, digital and printed publications, and static archive images. Most data is CC0 1.0; descriptions and place data are CC-BY 4.0. No API key required; anonymous limit is 60 requests/minute per IP. Clients should send an AIC-User-Agent header for courtesy tracking. The canonical aggregator (Laravel) is open source on GitHub, and nightly bulk data dumps are published in a sibling repo. url: https://api.artic.edu/docs/ image: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/AIC-LOGO/full/300,/0/default.jpg specificationVersion: '0.20' created: '2026-05-28' modified: '2026-05-29' x-source: public-apis/public-apis x-type: opensource x-category: "Art & Design" x-tier: 2 x-tier-reason: opensource-with-public-openapi-and-mcp tags: - Art And Design - Museum - Open Data - Cultural Heritage - IIIF - Public APIs - Open Source apis: - name: Art Institute of Chicago Public API description: >- Open REST and search API surfacing the museum's collection, agents, exhibitions, tours, publications, products and operational data (galleries, hours, sites). Backed by Elasticsearch; data refreshed nightly. Read-only. humanURL: https://api.artic.edu/docs/ baseURL: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1 tags: - Art And Design - Museum - Open Data properties: - type: Documentation url: https://api.artic.edu/docs/ - type: OpenAPI url: openapi/art-institute-of-chicago-openapi.yml - type: OpenAPI url: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/openapi.json - type: Authentication url: https://api.artic.edu/docs/ - type: RateLimits url: rate-limits/art-institute-of-chicago-rate-limits.yml - type: License url: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ - type: Example url: examples/art-institute-of-chicago-artworks-list-example.json - type: Example url: examples/art-institute-of-chicago-agents-list-example.json - type: Example url: examples/art-institute-of-chicago-exhibitions-list-example.json - type: Example url: examples/art-institute-of-chicago-galleries-list-example.json - type: Example url: examples/art-institute-of-chicago-places-list-example.json - type: Example url: examples/art-institute-of-chicago-products-list-example.json - type: Example url: examples/art-institute-of-chicago-tours-list-example.json - type: Example url: examples/art-institute-of-chicago-exhibitions-search-example.json - type: JSONSchema url: json-schema/art-institute-of-chicago-artwork-schema.json - type: JSONSchema url: json-schema/art-institute-of-chicago-agent-schema.json - type: JSONSchema url: json-schema/art-institute-of-chicago-place-schema.json - type: JSONSchema url: json-schema/art-institute-of-chicago-gallery-schema.json - type: JSONSchema url: json-schema/art-institute-of-chicago-exhibition-schema.json - type: JSONSchema url: json-schema/art-institute-of-chicago-product-schema.json - type: JSONSchema url: json-schema/art-institute-of-chicago-tour-schema.json - type: JSONStructure url: json-structure/art-institute-of-chicago-artwork-structure.json - type: JSONStructure url: json-structure/art-institute-of-chicago-agent-structure.json - type: JSONStructure url: json-structure/art-institute-of-chicago-place-structure.json - type: JSONStructure url: json-structure/art-institute-of-chicago-gallery-structure.json - type: JSONStructure url: json-structure/art-institute-of-chicago-exhibition-structure.json - type: JSONStructure url: json-structure/art-institute-of-chicago-product-structure.json - type: JSONStructure url: json-structure/art-institute-of-chicago-tour-structure.json - type: JSON-LD url: json-ld/art-institute-of-chicago-context.jsonld - name: IIIF Image API description: >- IIIF Image API 2.0-compliant service for delivering image binaries for artworks. Combine artwork.image_id with config.iiif_url returned by the Public API. humanURL: https://api.artic.edu/docs/#iiif-image-api baseURL: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2 tags: - IIIF - Images properties: - type: Documentation url: https://api.artic.edu/docs/#iiif-image-api - type: Specification url: https://iiif.io/api/image/2.0/ - name: Bulk Data Dumps description: >- Nightly data dumps of the collection and related resources, published as JSON in a public GitHub repository. Recommended for bulk consumers instead of scraping the API. humanURL: https://github.com/art-institute-of-chicago/api-data baseURL: https://github.com/art-institute-of-chicago/api-data tags: - Bulk Data - Open Data properties: - type: GitHubRepository url: https://github.com/art-institute-of-chicago/api-data common: - type: Website url: https://www.artic.edu/ - type: Documentation url: https://api.artic.edu/docs/ - type: Portal url: https://api.artic.edu/docs/ - type: TermsOfService url: https://www.artic.edu/terms/terms-and-conditions - type: PrivacyPolicy url: https://www.artic.edu/privacy - type: Support url: mailto:engineering@artic.edu - type: GitHubOrganization url: https://github.com/art-institute-of-chicago - type: GitHubRepository name: data-aggregator url: https://github.com/art-institute-of-chicago/data-aggregator - type: GitHubRepository name: api-data url: https://github.com/art-institute-of-chicago/api-data - type: GitHubRepository name: aic-bash url: https://github.com/art-institute-of-chicago/aic-bash - type: SDK name: aic-bash url: https://github.com/art-institute-of-chicago/aic-bash description: Bash script that queries the API for public-domain artworks and renders them as ASCII art. - type: Tools name: Browser Extension url: https://github.com/art-institute-of-chicago/browser-extension description: Show a random artwork from the collection in a new browser tab. - type: Tools name: aic-mobile-android url: https://github.com/art-institute-of-chicago/aic-mobile-android description: Official Art Institute of Chicago mobile app for Android (Kotlin). - type: Tools name: aic-mobile-ios url: https://github.com/art-institute-of-chicago/aic-mobile-ios description: Official Art Institute of Chicago mobile app for iOS (Swift). - type: Tools name: aic-mobile-cms url: https://github.com/art-institute-of-chicago/aic-mobile-cms description: CMS that powers the official mobile apps. - type: Tools name: twill url: https://github.com/art-institute-of-chicago/twill description: Open-source Laravel CMS toolkit originally built at the Art Institute. - type: Tools name: artic-mcp (community) url: https://github.com/mikechao/artic-mcp description: >- Community-built Model Context Protocol (MCP) server providing natural-language access to the Art Institute of Chicago Collection. TypeScript, MIT-licensed; not officially maintained by the museum. - type: SpectralRules url: rules/art-institute-of-chicago-rules.yml - type: Vocabulary url: vocabulary/art-institute-of-chicago-vocabulary.yml - type: NaftikoCapability url: capabilities/shared/art-institute-of-chicago.yaml - type: NaftikoCapability url: capabilities/browse-collection.yaml - type: NaftikoCapability url: capabilities/research-artist.yaml - type: NaftikoCapability url: capabilities/plan-museum-visit.yaml - type: NaftikoCapability url: capabilities/mobile-audio-tour.yaml - type: NaftikoCapability url: capabilities/education-resources.yaml - type: NaftikoCapability url: capabilities/museum-shop.yaml - type: NaftikoCapability url: capabilities/global-search.yaml - type: Plans url: plans/art-institute-of-chicago-plans-pricing.yml - type: RateLimits url: rate-limits/art-institute-of-chicago-rate-limits.yml - type: PublicAPIsListing url: https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis features: - name: Open Collection Data description: ~120,000 artworks plus rich metadata, openly licensed and free to use. - name: Elasticsearch-Powered Search description: Full-text and DSL search on every major resource (q, query, sort, from, size, facets). - name: IIIF Image Delivery description: Standards-compliant image delivery via IIIF Image API 2.0 with hotlinking allowed. - name: Sparse Fieldsets and Batch Fetch description: fields= and ids= parameters reduce payload size and round trips. - name: Nightly Bulk Dumps description: api-data repo provides full JSON dumps as an alternative to scraping. - name: Authority Alignment description: Places aligned to Getty TGN, agents aligned to Getty ULAN. useCases: - name: Cultural-Heritage Research description: Search and aggregate artworks, artists, places and exhibitions for scholarly work. - name: Educational Apps and Lessons description: Build classroom tools using artworks, educator resources and digital publications. - name: Visitor-Planning Apps description: Show what is on view today via exhibitions, galleries, hours, and tours. - name: Mobile Audio Tours description: Drive in-gallery audio experiences with tours and mobile-sounds endpoints. - name: Generative and AI Workflows description: Public-domain artworks make ideal training and grounding data for image/RAG pipelines. - name: Creative Reuse description: Browser extensions, ASCII renderers, screensavers and embeddings demos already exist as exemplars. integrations: - name: IIIF description: International Image Interoperability Framework for image delivery and presentation manifests. - name: Getty Vocabularies description: TGN (places) and ULAN (agents) authority IDs returned with records. - name: schema.org description: Linked-data alignment provided in json-ld/art-institute-of-chicago-context.jsonld. - name: Elasticsearch description: Underlying search engine; query DSL is exposed via search endpoints. - name: Twill CMS description: The museum's open-source Laravel CMS used to publish editorial content. - name: Model Context Protocol description: Community-built MCP server (mikechao/artic-mcp) for AI-assistant access. solutions: - name: Public Domain Image Reuse description: Use any artwork flagged is_public_domain=true at any resolution without restriction. maintainers: - FN: Kin Lane email: kin@apievangelist.com