The Value of Money
Galleries and Exhibitions
Monetary objects are powerful sources for exploring the past. The Value of Money connects American history to global histories of exchange, cultural interaction and expression, political change, and innovation through objects from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Numismatic Collection.
This exhibition examines the origins of money, new monetary technologies, the political and cultural messages money conveys, numismatic art and design, and the practice of collecting money. The Value of Money features more than 300 objects from our national money collection representing every inhabited continent and spanning more than 3,000 years.
- Exhibition website
- Online exhibition
- Exhibition catalog
- Press release, Exhibition Opening, 2015
- Press release, East Asian Coins on Display, 2017
- Press release, Exhibition Refresh, 2024
Related blogs and articles:
- 1.5 ton vault door to greet visitors in the new Gallery of Numismatics
- In Numismatics, it’s cool to be Square
- Three gold rarities that escaped the melting pot
- Collecting the present: partnering with researchers to document new developments in money
- A general’s coins and Japanese restoration
- What is innovation in money today?
- Art from money: Paper money origami
- Let them eat dollars: Hyperinflation from revolutionary France to Zimbabwe
- Exploring connections between the U.S. and East Asia through the Howard F. Bowker Numismatic Collection
- Call a spade a spade (or a coin)
- Dollars for Donuts in Monrovia, Liberia
- Feingold, Ellen. "How Medieval Money Shaped Ukraine's Modern Identity" Smithsonian Magazine, 2022.
- Feingold, Ellen. A Federal Agent's Laptop Held the Keys to Seize $3.6 Billion in Stolen Bitcoin. Here's How It Ended Up at the Smithsonian Smithsonian Magazine, 2024.
Really BIG Money
Really BIG Money is an exciting new money gallery for children. It features some of the world’s largest and most surprising monetary objects. Big in size, quantity, or denomination, each piece can help children learn about the world around them, including communities and cultures, the natural environment, political leaders, and the process of exchange. Highlights include the long tail feathers of a Resplendent Quetzal bird, a 31-pound Swedish copper plate, and a coin head made from 165 Roman coins.
Related blogs, articles, and podcasts:
- What can really BIG money teach us about our world?
- 2 experts, 165 coins, 1 really big head
- Making Match the Money
- "Opening the new display with Dr. Ellen Feingold" Coin World Podcast, 2022
- Feingold, Ellen, Abby Pfisterer, Orlando R. Serrano Jr., and Sarah Weicksel. "Working Together: New Approaches to a History Exhibition for Children." Perspectives on History (2023).
Stories on Money (closed June 24, 2019)
featuring “Women on Money”
Related blogs, articles, and podcasts:
- Women on Money
- Women’s Work: Depictions of Idealized Women and Labor on Paper Currency
- Women in Gold: Powerful Empresses on Byzantine Coins
- Suffragists: From campaigns to currency
- "America Has a Long History of Redesigning Its Currency. Let's Revive It," Politico Magazine, 2021
- "On the Money," Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2021