PRINCETON OPENS NEW PERMANENT COIN EXHIBIT

Members of the Princeton University Art Museum Student Advisory Board opened a permanent collection of ancient and medieval coins at the museum.

The collection emphasizes the importance of numismatics and reflects the University's extensive collection of coins, Dr. Alan Stahl, the University curator of numismatics, said.

The SAB consists of students dedicated to promoting student involvement at the museum. Three undergraduate students, Daniel Elkind '17, Constantin Weickart '17, and Hannah Baumann '18 led the effort to create a more extensive gallery of coins at the library.

“I got interested in coins through courses in Late Antiquity, and basically all my professors used coins in their lectures,” Weickart said. “I saw how important coins are not only as objects but also as historical sources. Princeton has one the best coin collections in the world.”

The University possesses over 110,000 coins in its collection, including coins, tokens, paper money, metals, and decorations, according to Stahl. This means the University has the largest coin collection of any university in the country.

The proposal to have more coins on permanent display was brought up in early 2015 by Elkind, Weickart, and Baumann. They brought the proposal to Stahl, and the suggestion was followed by yearlong, back-and-forth work with the art museum to bring the proposal to fruition, according to Weickart.

“We went back to Dr. Stahl and formulated the list of coins that we wanted to use. We decided on what were some of the narratives we wanted to show, what were some of the images we wanted to compare,” said Baumann. “We were in charge of writing the label and content. Even though they're so short, they are so difficult because they have to contain within it so much information.”

The Art Museum only displayed a handful of Byzantine coins in its collection, Weickart said. The new exhibit will showcase a wide-ranging collection of ancient and medieval coins from the 6th century BCE to 1400 AD.

“[The coin collection] is there primarily for educational use. A lot of classes visit the coin collection during the course of the year,” Stahl said. “Students come to do research for term papers or get images of coins to use in presentations.” Stahl added that the exhibit is also open to outside scholars for their research, especially since the coin collection will not be part of the rotating exhibit hall but part of the permanent display.

“As a classics major, I want to get people excited about the ancient world, not just the literature, but also how multifaceted and interdisciplinary the study of classics can be,” Baumann said.

To read the complete article, see:
Art Museum Student Advisory Board opens new permanent coin collection (www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2016/11/art-museum-student-advisory-board-opens-new-permanent-coin-collection)

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