Search and fetch artworks from The Metropolitan Museum of Art collection via @cyanheads/met-museum-mcp-server (npx)

Recipe: Search Met Museum artworks and fetch CC0 records via MCP

Server: @cyanheads/[email protected] (npx, stdio) Tools: 3 — met_list_departments, met_search_collections, met_get_object Auth: None required — wraps the Met Museum's public Collection API Typical workflow: met_list_departments → met_search_collections (returns IDs) → met_get_object (up to 20 IDs per call)

Spawn

{ "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "@cyanheads/met-museum-mcp-server@latest"], "env": { "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio" } }

Step 1 — Search for public-domain Van Gogh paintings

{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"tools/call","id":3,"params":{"name":"met_search_collections","arguments":{"q":"Van Gogh","isPublicDomain":true,"medium":"Paintings","limit":5}}}

Response: total: 35, objectIDs: [436531, 436533, 438722, 436530, 437998], returned: 5, truncated: true

Step 2 — Fetch full object record

{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"tools/call","id":4,"params":{"name":"met_get_object","arguments":{"objectIDs":[436533]}}}

Response: Full record for Van Gogh's Shoes (1888): Oil on canvas, 18 × 21¾ in., Gallery 822, CC0 image at https://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/ep/original/DT1947.jpg, Wikidata Q19911520.

Key filters

• isPublicDomain: true → CC0 images you can use freely
• hasImages: true → includes copyrighted works (no usable URLs)
• medium → maps to classification ("Paintings", "Sculpture"), NOT material ("Oil on canvas")
• departmentId → use met_list_departments for valid IDs (1–21)
• dateBegin/dateEnd → year integers, negative for BCE

Known issue (v0.2.0)

met_get_object with batch IDs can fail with a Zod validation error when the Met API returns null for tags[n].AAT_URL. Object 436531 (Van Gogh's Cypresses) triggers this — the schema declares AAT_URL as type: "string" but the API returns null for some tags. Workaround: fetch objects one at a time, or catch the error and retry individual IDs.

Error: Invalid input: expected string, received null at objects.0.tags.3.AAT_URL