Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum API
47
AI ReadinessFoundational (D)47/100
Agent-ready OpenAPI document · curated by JenticMediaContent DeliveryapiKey1 EndpointsREST
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For Agents
Search Cooper Hewitt's design collection and pull structured records on objects, people, exhibitions and image assets through a single dispatch endpoint authenticated with an access token.
Use for: Search for chairs in the Cooper Hewitt collection from the Art Nouveau period, Retrieve the full record for a specific Cooper Hewitt object by ID, Find all exhibitions a designer has been featured in, Get image URLs for a Cooper Hewitt object I can use under CC0
Not supported: Does not handle ticketing, donations, or member accounts - use for read-only access to Cooper Hewitt collection metadata only.
Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI specification for Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum API, keeping it validated and agent-ready. The Cooper Hewitt API exposes the Smithsonian Design Museum's collection of objects, people, exhibitions, periods, types and roles through a single REST endpoint dispatched by a method query parameter. Collection data (excluding images) is released under Creative Commons Zero, so agents can fetch and reuse object records, biographies, exhibition lists and image URLs freely. Authentication uses an access token passed as a query parameter, and responses are returned as structured JSON suitable for downstream cataloguing or RAG pipelines.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum API to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
1
Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fcooperhewitt.org%2Fcooperhewitt" | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fcooperhewitt.org%2Fcooperhewitt" | sh
jentic register # connects your agent to your Jentic One instanceJentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.
Capabilities
What an agent can do with Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum API.
Search the Cooper Hewitt collection for objects by keyword, period, type or role
Retrieve full metadata for a specific design object including credit lines and provenance
List exhibitions a person has appeared in or curated at the Smithsonian Design Museum
Pull biographical records for designers, makers and donors in the collection
Resolve image URLs for objects released under Creative Commons Zero
Browse collection taxonomies including periods, types and roles to navigate holdings
Use Cases
Patterns agents use Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum API for, with concrete tasks.
★ Design History Research Assistant
Researchers and educators can query Cooper Hewitt for objects, makers and exhibitions to assemble citation-ready evidence for design history projects. The API dispatches every call through one root endpoint with a method parameter such as cooperhewitt.objects.getInfo, returning structured JSON that downstream RAG pipelines can chunk and index. Because collection metadata is CC0, results can be redistributed in derivative works without licensing friction.
Call cooperhewitt.objects.search with query 'Eames chair' and return the top five matching object IDs with their titles and dates.
Cultural Heritage Cataloguing
Catalogue platforms and aggregators can pull Cooper Hewitt records to enrich their own holdings with cross-referenced design objects. The dispatch pattern means a single base URL covers every method, simplifying integration for batch ingestion. Image URLs returned under CC0 can be cached locally for thumbnail rendering.
Fetch metadata for object ID 18382347 and extract title, accession number, credit line and primary image URL.
Exhibition Discovery for Education Tools
Learning apps focused on design education can surface relevant Cooper Hewitt exhibitions and the people involved with them when a learner asks about a designer or movement. The exhibitions and people methods return linked records, enabling navigation from a designer to their exhibitions and back to other contributors.
Look up the people record for 'Charles Eames' and list the IDs and titles of every Cooper Hewitt exhibition he has appeared in.
AI Agent Collection Browsing
An AI agent can answer natural-language questions about the Cooper Hewitt collection by translating intents into method names and dispatching them through Jentic. The agent receives validated input schemas for each method, so it can construct queries against periods, types and roles taxonomies without reading the docs site.
Use Jentic to search Cooper Hewitt for objects of type 'poster' from period '1960-1969' and return five results with titles and image URLs.
Key Endpoints
1 endpoints — jentic publishes the only available openapi specification for cooper hewitt smithsonian design museum api, keeping it validated and agent-ready.
METHOD
PATH
DESCRIPTION
GET
/
Dispatch root that executes any Cooper Hewitt API method via the method query parameter
GET
/
Dispatch root that executes any Cooper Hewitt API method via the method query parameter
Jentic AI Readiness Score
This API is usable in Jentic One now. Its AI-readiness score against Jentic's framework shows where it stands today and where improvements would make it even easier for agents to use.
C
Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum API
- Foundational (D)47/100
90
Foundational Compliance63
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility44
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience94
Agent Usability15
Security100
AI DiscoverabilityPowered by JenticScoring Framework 1.0.0 | Scoring Engine 0.4.0
Show dimension breakdown
90
Foundational Compliance
Base layer of spec validity and structural soundness.
Grade: ASignals: 4
99%
Lint Results
Aggregated quality score from linter diagnostics, weighted by severity.
100%
Resolution Completeness
Percentage of `$ref` references that resolve successfully.
100%
Specification Validity
Checks whether the API description parses successfully and conforms to its declared specification (e.g., OpenAPI).
60%
Structural Integrity
Structural correctness score based on schema issues using logarithmic dampening.
63
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility
Clarity, completeness, and ingestion readiness for developers and tooling.
Grade: B-Signals: 4
0%
Example Density
How richly the API is illustrated with examples.
100%
Example Validity
Percentage of examples that conform to their schemas.
50%
Response Coverage
Percentage of operations with complete response definitions (success, client error, server error).
100%
Tooling Readiness
Health of API ingestion, bundling, and resolution within Jentic pipelines.
44
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience
Semantic breadth, depth, and agent comprehension for AI systems.
Grade: DSignals: 4
24%
Description Coverage
Coverage of descriptions across API elements.
0%
Error Standardization
Coverage of RFC 9457 Problem Details for error responses.
100%
OperationId Quality
Coverage, uniqueness, and casing consistency of operationIds for AI inference.
50%
Summary Coverage
Coverage of summaries across operations/tags/info.
94
Agent Usability
Functional utility, complexity comfort, and AI orchestration readiness.
Grade: A+Signals: 1
94%
Complexity Comfort
Agent comfort level based on API operational and structural complexity.
15
Security
Trust, risk posture, and security compliance.
Grade: FSignals: 1
15%
Authentication Strength
Average quality of security schemes based on authentication method strength (weakest link for OAuth2).
100
AI Discoverability
Findability, semantic richness, and reasoning readiness.
Grade: A+Signals: 1
100%
Descriptive Richness
Clarity and depth of descriptions across API elements.
Score it yourself
Every API in the directory is allowlisted, so you can re-score it with no key required.
npx @jentic/api-scorecard-cli score <openapi-url>Why Jentic?
What agents get from Jentic-routed access to this vendor.
Setup
Wiring the Cooper Hewitt API by hand means passing your access_token as a query parameter and driving its single dispatch endpoint with the right method name for each collection lookup. Through Jentic you install once, import the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum API from the API Directory, store the token once, and your agent calls it.
Permission scoping
The collection method to run travels in the request to a single read-only dispatch endpoint, not as a fixed path resource, so scope this by operations: allow the agent the collection reads it needs and nothing further. Since the API is read-only, the allowed set stays limited to lookups you approve.
Credential isolation
Your Cooper Hewitt access token is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected as a query parameter at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'search the Cooper Hewitt collection' or 'get museum object info', and Jentic returns the dispatch operation with its input schema and method-name guidance so the agent picks the right method without browsing the reference docs.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
FAQs
Specific to using Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum API through Jentic.
Why is there no official OpenAPI spec for Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum API?
Cooper Hewitt does not publish an OpenAPI specification. Jentic generates and maintains this spec so that AI agents and developers can call Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum API via structured tooling. It is validated against the live API and kept up to date. Get started with Jentic One, the self-hosted execution layer.
What authentication does the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum API use?
The API uses an access token passed as a query parameter on each call. Through Jentic the token is stored in the credential vault and injected at execution time, so the raw access token never enters agent context.
Can I search for objects by period or type with the Cooper Hewitt API?
Yes. The single dispatch endpoint accepts a method parameter such as cooperhewitt.objects.search with filters for period, type, role and free-text query, returning matching object IDs, titles, dates and image references.
Are the images returned by the Cooper Hewitt API free to use?
Collection metadata is released under Creative Commons Zero. Image rights vary per object, so check the rights field returned with each object record before redistributing image files.
How do I integrate the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum API with an agent through Jentic?
Run pip install jentic, then have the agent search Jentic with a query such as 'search Cooper Hewitt collection', load the returned operation schema, and execute it against the / dispatch endpoint with the chosen method name.
What rate limits apply to the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum API?
The OpenAPI spec does not declare formal rate limits. Treat the service as best-effort, back off on HTTP 429 responses, and cache object records locally where possible since collection metadata changes slowly.
Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum API?
Yes. Because you run Jentic One yourself, your own rules decide which operations and credentials the agent may use. This API routes every call through a single read-only dispatch endpoint where the collection method travels in the request, so you scope access by operation: allow only the specific collection reads the agent needs, such as searching objects or fetching an object record, and withhold the rest. Since the API is read-only, the approved set stays confined to the lookups you permit and cannot write or change any data.
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