Getty Museum offers over 88,000 Art Images for Free Usage

Full length portrait of a man holding a rod

I’m a huge fan of accessing public domain and creative commons licensed work for personal and educational usages.

Why do I think the public domain is important? The public domain feeds creativity across various art forms, assists in preserving films and historical documents for future generations, makes education more affordable and interactive, and helps open government operations to public scrutiny.

Also, using these works to inspire our own lets us all stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before, adding more light and warmth to our world.

Since 2013, the Getty Museum has released art images into the public domain–technically, using a Creative Commons (CC0) license. Now, they have over 88,000 images you can use for whatever purpose you like without permission.


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New Year, Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel

man with fireworks
Photo by Rakicevic Nenad on Pexels.com

It’s the first newsletter of the new year, and I’ve got several cool things to share with you.

I’m still struggling to adjust back to normal life after the swirling nothingness that is the week between Christmas and New Year’s. We didn’t do much at our house besides reading, listening to new vinyl, and eating way more snacks than we should have.

But, life continues, and we meet a new year with new challenges head-on, no stopping.

I hope this year holds much joy and happiness for you. For now, here’s this week’s “10 things”…

10 Things Worth Sharing


Thanks for taking the time to read this post. If you’ve enjoyed the insights and stories, consider showing your support by subscribing to my weekly newsletter. It’s a great way to stay updated and dive deeper into my content. Alternatively, if you love audiobooks or want to try them, click here to start your free trial with Audible. Your support in any form means the world to me and helps keep this blog thriving. Looking forward to connecting with you more!

The 1-Bit Great Wave

I’m sure you’re familiar with Hokusai’s “Great Wave” or have at least seen this image:

Hokusai's great wave
By Katsushika Hokusai – Metropolitan Museum of Art: entry 45434, Public Domain

I’ll go ahead and say that this print is one of the more famous art pieces in the world. It’s part of a series of 36 views of Mt. Fuji.

If you’re looking for ideas for student projects, a good starting point is having them recreate public-domain works in their own ways using whatever materials they choose.

For example: let’s say they wanted to use old software to create a 1-bit version (black and white) of this image. It might look something like this:

1-bit great wave by @hypertalking

A very cool project from @hypertalking. He’s briefly recapped his process here and could inspire you or your students to get creative in unexpected ways.

Long Live the Public Domain

This is a preview of my Friday “10 Things” newsletter. Friday editions are free for everyone.

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends.

It’s the first week of January which means here in the US, the public domain was just infused with all sorts of new (old) content. Included this year are the later Sherlock Holmes publications (YES!) and Metropolis, an early film of art deco dystopia.

Millions of documents, images, and other media now live in the public domain, making them freely available to anyone. We can use those works as inspiration for creating our own, standing on the shoulders of giants, and bringing our own creative ideas into the never-ending mix.

As such, here are some things on content, creation, and the public domain that I thought were pretty awesome.

10 Cool Things Worth Sharing

  1. Everything that enters the public domain in 2023 (and some ideas on how you might use them in schools)

To read the rest, subscribe to my Friday “10 Things” newsletter.

Making Bach Accessible to Everyone Online

I know not everyone is a fan of classical music. I get it. But you don’t have to be a fan to recognize the impact that music written hundreds of years ago still has on musicians today.

Composers and songwriters still take inspiration from the melodies created by Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninov, and many more.

Think of the possibilities with your students if you had one place to access all the available performances of someone like Bach.

Now you do. Enter the “All of Bach” project.

Since the start of this unique project, more than 350 of the total of 1080 works by Johann Sebastian Bach have been performed and recorded in special ways. They include some remarkable highlights, such as the St Matthew Passion in the Grote Kerk, in Naarden, the Six Cello Suites at beautiful Amsterdam locations like the Concertgebouw and the Rijksmuseum, and Brandenburg Concerto no. 4 in Felix Meritis, in Amsterdam.

Informative texts, interesting facts and interviews with the performers provide a wealth of background information. All the works are performed by the Netherlands Bach Society and many guest musicians, and you can watch and listen to recordings of the complete works. In personal interviews, the musicians themselves talk about what touches them in the music or why they enjoy playing it so much. In order to keep close to Bach, the recordings are made at suitable venues, but we also look for unusual recording locations. Cantatas are filmed in a church, for instance, and chamber music at the musicians’ homes or at special locations in the Netherlands.

https://www.bachvereniging.nl/en/about-allofbach

Of course, these works are available for performance by anyone since they are part of the public domain, allowing new generations to experience the work of a master and be inspired to create their own masterpieces.