Islamic art on display in New York

Visitors look at items as part of a press preview of the 'Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition' exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on March 12, 2012. The exhibition, which is scheduled to run March 14- July 18, presents this era in the history of the eastern Mediterranean, through some 300 works of art during which at the start of the seventh century, the eastern Mediterranean - from Syria through Egypt and across North Africa - was central to the spiritual and political heart of the Byzantine Empire, ruled from Constantinople (modern Istanbul). (AFP/Getty Images)