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Art Institute of Chicago Artworks Scraper

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Art Institute of Chicago Artworks Scraper

Scrape artwork records from the Art Institute of Chicago's open REST API. Returns full metadata for 131k+ artworks including title, artist, department, medium, dimensions, classification, style/subject taxonomy, dominant colour analysis (HSL), and IIIF image URLs. No API key required — the AIC API is fully public with CC0 metadata.

What you get

Each scraped record contains:

Field Description
id Unique AIC artwork ID
title Artwork title
artist_display Full artist display string (name, nationality, dates)
artist_title Primary artist name (short form)
date_display Human-readable date string (e.g. "1906" or "c. 1890–1900")
date_start Earliest possible year for the artwork
date_end Latest possible year for the artwork
medium_display Materials and technique description
artwork_type_title Artwork type (Painting, Drawing, Print, Sculpture, etc.)
department_title Museum department holding the artwork
classification_titles Classification tags array (e.g. "oil on canvas", "european painting")
dimensions Physical dimensions string
place_of_origin Country or region where the artwork was created
is_public_domain True if the artwork image is in the public domain (CC0)
credit_line Donor/acquisition credit line
gallery_title Gallery currently displaying the artwork (null if in storage)
color_h Dominant colour hue (HSL, 0–360)
color_s Dominant colour saturation (HSL, 0–100)
color_l Dominant colour lightness (HSL, 0–100)
subject_titles Subject/theme tags array (e.g. "landscapes", "water lilies")
style_titles Art style tags array (e.g. "Impressionism", "20th Century")
image_id IIIF image identifier (UUID)
iiif_image_url Full IIIF image URL (843px wide JPEG) — null if no image
aic_artwork_url Canonical artwork page URL on artic.edu

Modes

Walk mode (default)

Paginate through the full collection of 131k+ artworks:

{
  "mode": "walk",
  "maxItems": 1000
}

Omit maxItems to walk the entire collection.

Add publicDomainOnly: true to restrict results to CC0 artworks (image downloads safe):

{
  "mode": "walk",
  "publicDomainOnly": true,
  "maxItems": 500
}

Search mode

Full-text keyword search across all artwork metadata:

{
  "mode": "search",
  "query": "impressionism",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Filter mode

Filter by artwork type, department, or date range:

{
  "mode": "filter",
  "artworkTypeTitle": "Painting",
  "dateFrom": 1880,
  "dateTo": 1920,
  "maxItems": 200
}

Available filters:

  • artworkTypeTitle — artwork type string (e.g. "Painting", "Drawing", "Print", "Sculpture", "Photograph")
  • departmentTitle — department name string (e.g. "Photography and Media", "Painting and Sculpture of Europe")
  • dateFrom — filter artworks with date_start >= this year
  • dateTo — filter artworks with date_start <= this year

Combine multiple filters in one run.

By-ID mode

Fetch specific artworks by their AIC numeric ID:

{
  "mode": "by_ids",
  "artworkIds": [16568, 27992, 28560],
  "maxItems": 10
}

IDs can be found in AIC URLs: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/16568/water-lilies.

Use cases

  • Art analytics datasets — combine with the Met Museum actor for a comprehensive GLAM collection
  • Colour research — the color_h/s/l fields enable colour-palette analysis across 131k artworks
  • Style/subject taxonomy — style_titles and subject_titles provide ready-made ML training labels
  • Public-domain image pipelines — filter is_public_domain: true and use iiif_image_url for CC0 downloads
  • Museum collection monitoring — run incrementally to detect newly added records

Rate limits

The AIC API is fully open — no authentication required. The actor runs at ~60 requests/minute with a 1-second delay between pages, well within the API's polite-use advisory. No proxy is needed.

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