Metropolitan Museum of Art offers free access to 400,000 images

As a photographer, I can see how you’d think that, and normally you’d be right, but you do not own the copyright of an image that faithfully reproduces a previous image. That is the precedence set by Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.

In order for new copyright to exist for a derivative work, the new work has to add something new that isn’t in the original. A reproduction does not do that. Their photos of furniture and sculpture and any other three-dimensional objects would be their copyright, of course, as the choice of angle, lighting, etc constitutes originality, but not the reproductions of two-dimensional work.

And I do now see that there are also non-PD images available, but they are clearly marked as such.

Source Article from http://www.dpreview.com/news/2014/05/22/metropolitan-museum-of-art-offers-free-access-to-400-000-images