2017 October eNews


 

UPCOMING EVENTS

An Auction to Benefit the ANS
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Auction of American Medals to Benefit the American Numismatic Society’s Campaign to Endow the Chair of the Executive Director

The American Numismatic Society (ANS) is pleased to announce the availability, by auction, of beautiful medals donated by Stanley DeForest Scott to benefit the Society’s Campaign to Endow the Chair of the Executive Director. The event will take place at the November 2017 Official Auction of the Whitman Coin & Collectibles Winter Expo in Baltimore, MD, by Stack’s Bowers Galleries.

Included in the 43 lots are American Revolutionary Era medals such as a bronze 1777 General Horatio Gates, a bronze 1779 DeFleury at Stony Point, and a silver 1781 Lieutenant Colonel John Egar Howard. Also included are medals from the early 1800s including a bronze 1814 Major General Edmund P. Gaines, and a silver 1804 Commodore Edward Preble.

Other lots include a number of Indian Peace medals, among them a bronze 1797 John Adams and a bronze 1809 James Madison. Also featured are a 1908 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle, a “1799” (1800) Washington Funeral Urn Medal, and an extremely fine, framed, cast bronze Washington Portrait medal.

For a complete listing of the 43 lots for online bidding, go to the Stacks Bowers Page.

 

Latest Book is available now!
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Roman Coins, Money, and Society in Elizabethan England by Richard Simpson, Andrew Burnett, and Deborah Thorpe is now available for purchase! Publishing Sir Thomas Smith’s On the Wages of the Roman Footsoldier, which has been a virtually unknown work to modern scholarship and, although it is the first original work written in England to use the evidence of ancient coins, it has previously played no part in the history of numismatics. The book throws new light on the “Cambridge circle,” the group of academics-turned-politicians who played a crucial role in the smooth accession of Elizabeth I. It is accompanied by a biography by Richard Simpson to remedy some of the misconceptions about Smith, and to set OWRF and his other writings in a biographical framework. A full transcript of OWRF is also included.

 

November Money Talks
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On Saturday November 18, join Jonathan Kagan, who has collected rare numismatic books for the last 40 years, and David Hill, Francis D Campbell Librarian and ANS archivist, for November’s Money Talks: “Numismatic Book Collecting.” They will examine the notion of collectible books and manuscripts and consider their place in private and public collections in the age of the Internet.

 

The Later Republican Cistophori November pre-sale
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For the month of November only we are offering a special pre-sale price of $40 on The Later Republican Cistophori by former ANS Chief Curator William E. Metcalf before it is released in December! The book catalogs and illustrates some 523 cistophori and fractions from the mints of Ephesus, Pergamum, Tralles, and Apameia, as well as the “ATPA” series and related issues. A detailed commentary discusses the Roman magistrates and the Greek signers of their coinages as well as the metrology and fineness of the cistophori. This work also includes cistophori from the collection of Richard B. Witschonke.

 

2017 Baltimore Winter Expo
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Executive Director Ute Wartenberg, Associate Curator Gilles Bransbourg, and new Membership Assistant Emma Pratte will be representing the ANS at the 2017 Baltimore Winter Expo from November 9–11. Stop by booth 912 and say hello! A number of books will be available for pre-order, including the special convention price of $49.95 for Brian Stickney’s upcoming book, A Monetary History of Central America.

 

The 2018 Annual Gala
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Next year’s Gala will take place on January 11, 2018 at the Harvard Club of New York City in honor of the Rosen family. More details are soon to come!

 

Dr. van Alfen’s Talk in Turkey
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On November 1 and 2, Peter van Alfen will be attending the International Symposium on the Port Cities of the Aegean World: Coins, Seals and Weights, which will be held in both Izmir and Manisa, Turkey. Dr. van Alfen’s paper for the symposium is entitled “The Archaic Coinage of Phokaia and the Limits of Cooperation.” He will also read the paper “An unpublished cistophoric hoard (NC 2004, p. 106 no. 129) and the cistophoric production of the Provincia Asia in the First century BC” on behalf of Dr. Lucia Carbone. Other speakers at the symposium include former ANS Summer Seminar Visiting Scholar Michel Amandry of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and Alan Stahl, former ANS Curator and current curator of numismatics at Princeton University Library.

 

Dr. Stolyarik at the New York Numismatic Club
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Collections Manager Elena Stolyarik will be speaking at the New York Numismatic Club’s 1,307th consecutive meeting on Friday, November 3 at the 3 West Club. Her talk will be on “Scythian-Greek Relations in the Black Sea (Pontic) Area: Numismatic Evidence.”

 

 

 

OCTOBER IN REVIEW

The 160th Annual Meeting
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On Saturday, October 28 the ANS held its 160th Annual Meeting. Members, future members, and the general public enjoyed staff presentations on departmental progress and a reception, which followed. Mr. Daniel Hamelberg, Prof. Sebastian Heath, Mr. Robert A. Kandel, Prof. Andrew Meadows, Mr. John Nebel, and Dr. Christopher J. Salmon, were elected as Trustees. At the preceding Board meeting, five members were elected as Fellows of the Society; Mr. Peter Bartlett, Mr. E. Tomlinson Fort, Mr. Del Parker, Prof. Gary Reger, and Mr. John W. Wilson. Alan Helms was elected as an Honorary Life Fellow, and Glen W. Bowersock was designated an Honorary Life Fellow. If you weren’t able to join us, you can view the presentations on our Youtube page soon. Departmental reports are also available in our Annual Report on our website.

 

The 2017 Huntington Award to Dr. Roger Bland
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On Friday, October 20, the ANS awarded the Archer M. Huntington medal to Dr. Roger Bland in recognition of his outstanding career contributions to numismatic scholarship. Dr. Bland also gave the Silvia Mani Hurter Memorial Lecture, entitled “How Coin Finds are Changing the face of Roman Britain: the Contribution of the Portable Antiquities Scheme.” “Dr. Bland’s research and published work on Roman Britain and its coin hoards has set new standards for numismatics and archaeologists,” said Prof. Jere Bacharach, the chair of the Society’s Huntington Committee. You can watch Dr. Bland’s lecture on Youtube.

 

High Resolution Images are now Available Online!
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The ANS is pleased to announce a new image-zooming feature in MANTIS , the online database of its numismatic collection, and ARCHER, the Society’s digital archive. The ANS will now make its highest-resolution images freely available under a Creative Commons license, enabling researchers to zoom down into minute details of an object that were obscured in the lower-resolution images previously published. More than 160,000 numismatic objects have been photographed thus far and are available in this new interface. Beyond MANTIS, the high-resolution images of Roman Republican, Imperial, and Hellenistic coins will likewise be available within their respective online type corpora projects: Coinage of the Roman Republic OnlineOnline Coinage of the Roman Empire, and PELLA.

 

New faces at the ANS
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The ANS welcomes three new people to the Society. Dr. Eric Krauss (left) is our new Curatorial Associate working on the American cabinets and database. He is currently researching Gobrecht dollars—looking into the circumstances of their creation and production—as well as accessioning a collection of Gasparro plasters. ANS Life Fellow Frank Kovacs (center) has also been appointed Curatorial Associate and will be working with our military decorations. Lara Jacobs (right) joins us through Internet Archive as the digital scanning technician. She will be digitizing ANS books and monographs for the Newman Numismatic Portal and Internet Archive. 

 

Google Arts & Culture and the ANS
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The American Numismatic Society has partnered with Google Arts & Culture to present online exhibits of its collections through the Google Cultural Institute. The Art of Devastation: Medals and Posters from the Great War marks the ANS’s first online exhibition, presented in seven sections. Featuring every medal and poster from the actual exhibit hosted at Vassar College’s Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center from January 27 until April 9, 2017, online guests can browse high-definition images, view video, engage with maps, and link directly to the ANS’s object database for more information about the items on display.

 

October Money Talks
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On Saturday, October 21 the ANS held its latest Money Talks. Len Augsburger, Ute Wartenberg, Andrew Reinhard, David Hill, and Peter van Alfen led the discussion on the future of digitization and looked at Linked Open Data and Open Access of which the ANS has a global leadership role. It was the only Money Talks conversation to be recorded—you can watch their talks on the ANS Youtube Channel today!

 

Gilbert School Visit
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On October 4 twenty students from Gilbert High School visited the ANS. The group, accompanied by two teachers and by Elizabeth Butterworth, the Director of Development of Paideia Institute, was welcomed by ANS Curators Peter van Alfen, Gilles Bransbourg, and Lucia Carbone, who introduced them to the history of Roman and Greek coinage. The school trip was part of the program NYC Classical Day Tours that aims to introduce high school students to the ancient world and the classical tradition.

 

U.S. Mexican Numismatic Convention
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On October 12–14 the ANS attended the U.S. Mexican Numismatic Association Convention in Scottsdale, Arizona. Dr. Wartenberg and Membership Assistant Emma Pratte brought a selection of coins, including a couple of new acquisitions, and pre-sold A Monetary History of Central America—a new ANS publication by Brian Stickney. It was being offered at a special convention only price of $49.95 and will be available for the same price at the Baltimore Winter Expo!

 

Dr. van Alfen Lectures at Fairfield
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On October 4 Peter van Alfen lectured to an honors class at Fairfield University on the origins of money and coinage. Taught by Prof. Giovanni Ruffini, the class is exploring various aspects of economies and economics in the ancient and modern worlds. Other guest lecturers in the class to date have included Prof. Joe Manning of Yale University, and former ANS Trustee Prof. Roger Bagnall of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University.

 

OCRE Finalization
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During Open Access Week, we published the public white paper we authored about the finalization of the Online Coins of the Roman Empire project for the National Endowment for the Humanities. The white paper includes details on the process of developing OCRE, how it is being used as a research, identification, or teaching tool for various audiences, and how the development of OCRE has contributed to further progress in other areas of numismatics (for example, with the Hellenistic Royal Coinages project). The paper is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1037040

 

AT THE ANS

Recent Acquisitions
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See what’s new at the library for September and October!

 

Membership Renewals
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Have you renewed your membership this year? It is not too late! If you aren’t sure, please contact Emma Pratte, and she can assist you. You can renew today for this year and 2018, at this year’s prices. You will receive two years of all the member benefits at the 2017 rate, including the ANS Magazine, free access to our library, consultations with our curators, discounts on publications, a reduced rate to our Money Talks lecture series, and invitations to special events. Renew online or contact the Membership Department at (212) 571-4470 ext. 117.

 

 

Advertise in the Award-Winning ANS Magazine
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Support the ANS by advertising in the award-winning quarterly ANS Magazine. The ad deadline for issue no. 1 of 2018 is January 1, 2018. For more information about advertising rates and specs, visit the advertising page or contact Joanne Isaac, Museum Administrator, at magazine@numismatics.org or (212) 571-4470 ext. 112.

 

Sponsor the ANS E-news

If you or your company would like to sponsor future issues of the ANS E-news, please contact Joanne Isaac, Museum Administrator, at (212) 571-4470 ext. 112 or jisaac@numismatics.org

 

Erratum

In last month’s enews we mentioned a talk Dr. Wartenberg gave on the sale of the 1933 Double Eagle at Public Auction. We wrote that it was sold by Sotheby’s but our Fellow Harvey Stack wrote to remind us that public auction was in fact a joint sale of both Stack’s and Sotheby’s. We apologize for this omission.