Design Museum Gent API v2

⚠️ v1 is deprecated

You are viewing the v2 API documentation. v1 is deprecated and will be sunset on 31 December 2026. The v1 documentation is archived here for reference. All new integrations should use v2 endpoints.

What's new in v2

	v1	v2
Data model	Linked Art / OSLO	Pure CIDOC-CRM
Serialization	JSON-LD (mixed vocabularies)	JSON-LD (strict CIDOC-CRM)
Agent data	OSLO `persoon#` properties	`crm:E21_Person`, `crm:P98i_was_born`
Multilingual	single language fields	`crm:E41_Appellation` per language
Nationality	plain string	EU Publications Office URI
Biographies	`crm:P3_has_note`	`crm:E33_Linguistic_Object` + CC BY-SA
Color data	HEX + CSS names (separate endpoints)	`crm:E36_Visual_Item` + `crm:E26_Physical_Feature`
Collections	paginated with Hydra	paginated with Hydra + `fullRecord` support
Base URI	`/v1/`	`/v2/`

Endpoints

Collections

Paginated lists of all records. Support ?fullRecord=true for bulk harvesting.

Endpoint	URI pattern	Description
Objects	`/v2/id/objects`	Paginated collection of all objects
Agents	`/v2/id/agents`	Paginated collection of all agents
Concepts	`/v2/id/concepts`	Paginated collection of the thesaurus
Exhibitions	`/v2/id/exhibitions`	Paginated collection of all exhibitions

Single entities

Single entities are retrieved using a unique identifier. All URIs are persistent and compliant with the Flemish URI standard.

Endpoint	URI pattern	Description
Object	`/v2/id/object/{PID}`	Single collection object with full metadata, color data and IIIF
Agent	`/v2/id/agent/{PID}`	Person or organisation with authority links and Wikipedia biographies
Exhibition	`/v2/id/exhibition/{PID}`	Single exhibition with object links and multilingual descriptions
Concept	`/v2/id/concept/{PID}`	Thesaurus term with multilingual labels and hierarchy

Quick links

Type	Example
Object	1987-1105
Agent	DMG-A-00162
Exhibition	TE_2020-001
Concept	530000049
Objects collection	/v2/id/objects
Agents collection	/v2/id/agents

Base URI

All v2 endpoints are served from: https://data.designmuseumgent.be/v2/

Response format

All endpoints return CIDOC-CRM compliant JSON-LD. Set your Accept header to application/ld+json:

curl -H "Accept: application/ld+json" \
  https://data.designmuseumgent.be/v2/id/object/1987-1105

Pagination

Collection endpoints use Hydra Core Vocabulary for pagination. Each response includes a hydra:view object:

Field	Description
`hydra:totalItems`	Total number of records in the collection
`hydra:first`	Link to the first page
`hydra:last`	Link to the last page
`hydra:previous`	Link to the previous page (omitted on first page)
`hydra:next`	Link to the next page (omitted on last page)

All active filters (fullRecord, hasImages, etc.) are automatically preserved in pagination links.

Harvesting

To harvest a full collection, follow hydra:next until it is absent:

async function harvest(url) {
    const res = await fetch(url);
    const data = await res.json();

    // process data["hydra:member"] here

    if (data["hydra:view"]["hydra:next"]) {
        await harvest(data["hydra:view"]["hydra:next"]);
    }
}

harvest('https://data.designmuseumgent.be/v2/id/objects?fullRecord=true&itemsPerPage=50');

Special HTTP responses

Code	Description
200	Successful request
301	Object has been merged — follow the `Location` header for the canonical URI
404	Record not found
410	Object permanently removed from the collection
429	Rate limit exceeded — max 10 requests per minute
500	Server error

Removed objects

Requesting a permanently removed object returns 410 Gone:

{ "error": "This object has been permanently removed from our collection." }

Merged objects

When an object has been merged into another record, the API returns 301 Moved Permanently with a Location header:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://data.designmuseumgent.be/v2/id/object/1987-0858

Most HTTP clients follow redirects automatically. Make sure your client is configured to follow 301 redirects.

Vocabularies & standards

All v2 responses use the following namespaces:

Prefix	Namespace	Used for
`crm`	http://www.cidoc-crm.org/cidoc-crm/	Core data model
`owl`	https://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#	Authority links (`owl:sameAs`)
`rdfs`	http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#	Labels and comments
`xsd`	http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#	Typed literals (dates, strings)
`prov`	http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#	Provenance (`prov:generatedAtTime`)
`skos`	http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#	Concept labels and hierarchy
`dcterms`	http://purl.org/dc/terms/	License and source attribution
`hydra`	http://www.w3.org/ns/hydra/core#	Pagination (collections only)

External authority vocabularies referenced in the data:

Vocabulary	Used for
Getty AAT	Object types, materials, techniques, roles
Getty TGN	Places (birth, death, production)
Getty ULAN	Agent authority records
Wikidata	Agents, institutions, places
EU Publications Office — Language	Language tags on appellations and descriptions
EU Publications Office — Country	Nationality
EU Publications Office — Human Sex	Gender
Stad Gent datahub	Source URIs (`owl:sameAs`)
Wikipedia	Biographies and multilingual titles (CC BY-SA 4.0)