Past Meets Future 2026

Colophon & Credits

Every image on this site is CC0 or public domain, shown in true color, never filtered, and credited here with each repository's own rights language.

Collection Credits

New-York Tribune, April 19, 1906Library of Congress, Chronicling America (sn83030214) · public domain · OCR regions from LoC's own data

Under the Wave off Kanagawa, Katsushika Hokusai, ca. 1830-32The Metropolitan Museum of Art (JP1847) · Open Access CC0

Night-Shining White, Han Gan, ca. 750, Tang dynastyThe Metropolitan Museum of Art (1977.78) · Open Access CC0

"The Feast of Sada," Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp, ca. 1525, TabrizThe Metropolitan Museum of Art (1970.301.2) · Open Access CC0

Book of the Dead for the Chantress of Amun, Nauny, ca. 1050 BCE, ThebesThe Metropolitan Museum of Art (30.3.31) · Open Access CC0

Huexotzinco Codex, 1531, Nahua (Huejotzingo, Puebla)Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Harkness Collection (mss47662-2657) · the Library is unaware of any copyright or other restrictions · living Nahua legal heritage

Tapestry Tunic, Wari culture, Andes, 7th-9th centuryThe Metropolitan Museum of Art (2020.79) · Open Access CC0 · shown with respect for its funerary context · palette computed from this image

Cosmic Buddha, Northern Qi dynasty, 550-77 CE, 3D laser scanSmithsonian NMAA (F1923.15) · CC0 · explore the AR/VR model at 3d.si.edu

Company E, 4th U.S. Colored Infantry, at Fort Lincoln, 1863-66Photograph by William Morris Smith · Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs (LC-DIG-cwpb-04294) · no known restrictions on publication · face/insignia overlay illustrative, shown as a group scene by policy

Two unidentified soldiers before a painted military-camp backdrop, hand-colored tintypeLiljenquist Family Collection, Library of Congress (2010650449) · no known restrictions on publication · detection boxes mark the painted backdrop, not the sitters

Policies

Honest annotations. Every overlay on this site is task-level geometry marking what is visibly present: headlines, seals, script columns, motifs, painted scenery. The Tribune's regions derive from the Library of Congress's own OCR data; the tunic's palette was computed from the source image itself. No transcription text ships without review by a named expert in that script.

Generated ornament, disclosed. The faint background texture behind the wordmark and the social preview card are generated ornament (GPT-Image-2): deliberately illegible, invented marks belonging to no real language or script. No archival imagery anywhere on this site is AI-generated, filtered, or tinted.

Organizer portraits. Photographs in the Organizers section come from each organizer's own public website, lab page, or institutional profile. Kurt Luther's portrait is by Tonia Moxley (Virginia Tech). Portraits render grayscale for visual consistency; the source files are unretouched.

Correction pledge. If we have framed your heritage wrongly, tell us and we will fix it within a week: pastmeetsfuturehaiworkshop@gmail.com