About the API

Background

M+ is embracing open access and working towards releasing as much of our collections metadata as possible. Our goal is to unlock the museum’s institutional knowledge and release it into the public domain, driven by M+’s mission as a public institution. Read more about our open access journey here and here.

We’ve released an open data set here, but are also sharing our data through a public API to help increase access and encourage creative projects. The M+ API will be available for anyone who’d like to work with it. It’s for developers, designers, artists, creators—anyone who’s curious about telling stories through data.

The data

The data made available to you through this API service is a reflection of institutional knowledge developed over time at M+. This data has been created by curators, registrars, researchers, and scholars working in collaboration with M+ to describe, express, and interpret the objects held in the M+ Collections. This data is made available to you, the public, as CC0 Open Data and through this API service, for use by your websites, applications, and research projects.

This data is provided ‘as is’ for research purposes and you may use it at your own risk. Documentation of the museum’s collection is an ongoing process and we are continuing to research and enrich our collections data. We will update the dataset with new and revised information on a regular basis. M+ makes no representations or warranties of any kind on this data.

Technical documentation and access

To access this API you must register for an account here. All calls to the API require an API key, which will be granted to you upon registration of your account.

For information on making use of this API, please see the technical documentation made available here.

Terms of use

General

• If you make use of this service, you are deemed to have accepted the terms and conditions listed here.
• This data is provided ‘as is’ for research purposes and you may use it at your own risk.
• Do not mislead others or misrepresent the data made available through this API.
• You must not use the M+ trademark or derivatives of the M+ name, or otherwise claim or imply that M+ endorses you or your use of the data made available through this API.
• Whenever you transform, translate, or otherwise modify this data, you must make it clear that the resulting information has been modified. If you enrich or otherwise modify the data, please consider publishing the derived data without reuse restrictions.
• You may not use the M+ logo or brand on your website without the specific written permission of M+.
• M+ reserves the right to extend or alter these terms and conditions at any time.

Rules of the road

• M+ kindly requests that you inform us about your use of the API by emailing us a link to your project and describing how you are using this API service.
• Additionally, M+ kindly requests that you actively acknowledge and give attribution to M+ wherever possible. If you use this dataset, please cite M+ as the source, using
  • the digital object identifier [####], and
  • the formal acknowledgement/attribution ‘source: M+, Hong Kong’, and
  • a link to our website: mplus.org.hk.
• M+ is periodically updating the data provided by this API. We ask that you not cache or store any content returned by the M+ API for more than two weeks without refreshing the data. If your application requires long term data caching, we ask that you contact us.
• We reserve the right to turn off or modify the API service at any time.
• We reserve the right to block or cancel your access to the API service without prior notice.
• While the data made available through this API is licensed as CC0 data, the API service itself is meant for non-commercial use only. If you plan to use this service for commercial purposes, please contact us.
• Respect other users of the API by limiting the number of API calls to 3,000 per day, or 2 calls per second.We reserve the right to limit or suspend your use of the API if you exceed these rate limits.

The writers of these guidelines thank Harvard Art Museumsand Cooper-Hewitt.

Contact us

Please contact us here with any questions regarding the API.