Smithsonian completes digitising job

Washington

THEY chose a pretty piece for last.

Photographer John Tsantes had placed the Seated Princess - an opaque watercolour and gold painting that is part of the famed Islamic collection of the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M Sackler Gallery - on his table and focused the cutting-edge digital camera mounted overhead. And in the split-second it took for the camera's shutter to close, the museum completed a multi-year effort to digitise its 40,000-item collection.