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Met Museum MCP Server

Search, filter, browse, and retrieve Met Museum artworks, provenance, linked data, and CC0 images through MCP.

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Install Met Museum MCP Server

Pick your client, then add it in one click or paste the config.

STDIONode.js
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "met-museum-mcp-server": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@cyanheads/met-museum-mcp-server"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Settings → Developer → Edit Config, merge this into mcpServers, then fully quit and reopen Claude Desktop.

Install not yet sandbox-tested— we haven't run this command through our automated sandbox yet. Not a red flag; we're working through the catalog.

Overview

The met-museum-mcp-server MCP server connects AI clients to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public collection API. It provides tools for listing departments, searching more than 500,000 objects, browsing IDs by department or update date, and retrieving detailed records with provenance and CC0 image URLs. Use it for collection research, artwork metadata workflows, image discovery, or batch processing through STDIO or Streamable HTTP. A public hosted endpoint is available, so local installation is optional.

Use cases

  • Search artworks by subject, medium, date, or department
  • Retrieve provenance and artist metadata for selected objects
  • Enumerate objects updated since a specified date
  • Find public-domain records with CC0 images
  • Build batch collection research workflows

Key features

  • Met collection search with multiple filters
  • Department and update-date object listing
  • Batch artwork record retrieval
  • Provenance and linked-data fields
  • CC0 image URLs and optional image content
  • STDIO and Streamable HTTP transports

Tools4

What Met Museum MCP Server lets your agent do. Expand a tool for its parameters.

Self-reported~159 tokens of context

Security & health

What it can reach and how reliably it runs — from our own checks, not the maintainer’s claims.

ActiveLast checked 2d ago

Recent health check succeeded.

6/6 checks healthy over the last 40d

Supply-chain signal

No high-severity advisories surfaced by our automated scan.

Critical 0High 0Medium 0Low 0

Scanned 5d ago via OSV.dev · @cyanheads/met-museum-mcp-server (npm)

Adoption & maintenance

Factual signals from GitHub, npm, and our automated checks — not a rating.

GitHub stars4Stargazers on the source repository.
npm downloads1kPackage downloads in the last 30 days.
Last commit10d agoMost recent push to the default branch.
Tools exposed4Callable tools this server registers over MCP.
Directory activity2 viewsConfig copies, upvotes, and views on AllMCPs.

How Met Museum MCP Server works

What met-museum-mcp-server does

The met-museum-mcp-server MCP server exposes the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public collection through four MCP tools. It covers more than 500,000 works spanning roughly 5,000 years and organizes discovery around the Met’s 19 curatorial departments.

The server supports keyword searches, filter-based collection browsing, object-ID enumeration, and detailed record retrieval. Returned artwork data can include titles, artist information, dates, media, geography, provenance, public-domain indicators, CC0 image URLs, tags, and links to related Wikidata entities. Getty ULAN and AAT URLs may also be present in linked data.

This fits the Art & Culture category and is useful when an agent needs structured Met collection data rather than general web search results.

How it works

met_list_departments returns department names and numeric IDs. Those IDs can then be supplied to search and listing operations.

met_search_collections requires a keyword, although "*" can be used for a filter-only search. It can narrow results by title or tags, department, medium, date range, geography, image availability, on-view status, and highlight status. Results support pagination through offsets and report totals, truncation, and the resolved query.

met_list_objects enumerates object IDs by department, by records created or revised since a date, or by both criteria. Without filters, it can enumerate the full collection. Lists are cached for up to one hour.

met_get_object retrieves records for object IDs returned by the search or listing tools. It accepts batches of up to 500 IDs but fetches up to 20 distinct records per call, reporting later IDs for follow-up. With includeImages: true, it can attach CC0 images for up to three eligible records as image content.

Setup and configuration

A public Streamable HTTP instance is available at https://met-museum.caseyjhand.com/mcp, so a client can connect without installing the package. Local clients can run the package through a standard STDIO configuration using bunx @cyanheads/met-museum-mcp-server@latest. The README also provides installation links for Claude Desktop, Cursor, and VS Code.

The server supports STDIO and Streamable HTTP transports. Its underlying framework also documents authentication choices including none, JWT, and OAuth, plus several storage backends, but the provided client setup does not require additional environment variables.

Tools and capabilities

The met-museum-mcp-server MCP server provides:

  • Department discovery with valid numeric IDs
  • Search pagination of up to 500 IDs per page through the first 10,000 matches
  • Unkeyworded enumeration by department or update date
  • Batch artwork retrieval with partial-success reporting
  • Provenance and public-domain fields for image decisions
  • CC0 image URLs and optional image content
  • Typed reporting for rate limits, blocked access, unavailable upstream services, invalid filters, and other request failures
  • Deferred-record reporting when structured output exceeds the stated byte budget

Limitations and notes

Image fields are empty for objects that are not public domain or do not have CC0 images. The Met’s index can contain IDs that are no longer served, so individual retrievals may fail. Batch retrieval reports failed IDs separately when some records succeed.

Search results are limited to the first 10,000 matches, while object listings have no stated depth limit. The Cloisters and Medieval Art departments share a result set at the Met, so a page may contain fewer records than requested and include a notice. Recent updates may be absent from object listings for up to an hour because of caching. Upstream blocking, rate limiting, and service failures are surfaced as typed errors rather than raw Met error pages.

Read the full README View source on GitHub

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Frequently Asked Questions about Met Museum MCP Server

met-museum-mcp-server is an MCP server that connects AI clients to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public collection API. Its main tools list departments, search collection records, enumerate object IDs by department or update date, and fetch artwork metadata, provenance, linked data, and eligible CC0 images.

Install it locally by configuring an MCP client to run `bunx @cyanheads/met-museum-mcp-server@latest` over STDIO. The README also provides installation links for Claude Desktop, Cursor, and VS Code. Alternatively, connect to the public Streamable HTTP endpoint without a local installation.

Yes, met-museum-mcp-server works with Cursor. The repository provides a Cursor installation link, and the server supports the standard MCP transports needed for client connections.

Connect an MCP client to `https://met-museum.caseyjhand.com/mcp` using Streamable HTTP. The public hosted instance requires no local package installation, and the README includes a client configuration example with this URL.

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