Galleries and Exhibitions

The Value of Money

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 400 objects from our national money collection representing every inhabited continent and spanning more than 3,000 years.

• Exhibition website
• Press release
• Exhibition catalog
• The Value of Money online exhibition *coming soon*

• Press release East Asian Coins on Display

Related Blogs

• 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)

Stories on Money

featuring “Women on Money”

• Exhibition website
• Press release
• Women on Money online exhibition *coming soon*

Related blogs:

• 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

Virtual Exhibits

Legendary Coins and Currency
Historic and rare coins from the National Numismatic Collection