National Museum of Asian Art

In preparation for a Chinese Object Study Workshop hosted by the National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA) in late August, I selected a sutra in the Freer and Sackler Library to illustrate the evolution in printing of Chinese books.  The rolled sutra is Baoqieyin Dharani sutra (宝箧印陀罗尼经) and was printed in 975 CE, likely making it the oldest printed item in our library collections.

The summer of 2020, as part of a Smithsonian Libraries’ Wikidata Pilot Project and in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Library offered an all-virtual internship project.

This is the third part of a series sharing Smithsonian Libraries and Archives’ work with linked open data and Wikidata. For background and overview of current projects, see the first two posts in the series.