FY2016 Report of David Yoon, Associate Curator

Report of David Yoon, Associate Curator

October 29, 2016

Over the past year, the largest task occupying my time has been the former Hispanic Society of America collection, specifically the medieval Spanish coins. Over the past year, two important groups were donated to us, one of Visigothic regal coins and one of early coins of the kingdom of Castile and León. For both of these donations, a great deal of time was spent preparing lists with correct attributions to help the process of having them appraised for donation, then creating new accession records for the coins after they were donated. The process continues, with more Visigothic and Castilian coins either newly donated or in the process of preparation for donation.

The Medieval Department has mostly been in our database system since the 1980s, but a few portions were skipped. During the past year I completed the accessioning of our Merovingian coins, in connection with researching and writing an article about Merovingian coins for the ANS Magazine. In contrast to the Medieval Department, substantial portions of the Modern Department have not yet been accessioned. During the past year I worked with an intern, Taylor Hartley, who accessioned parts of two of these sections: Italian emergency paper money and Dutch jetons.

My ongoing research focuses on the “pseudoimperial” coins that imitate Late Roman imperial coins but were issued under other authorities, in this case the Visigothic and Burgundian kingdoms of southern France and Spain during the sixth century. The principal focus of this work has been a detailed analysis of trajectories of stylistic change, but work during the past year has also included die studies of two of the three well-recorded hoards of these coins.

In addition to our own research, an important part of our role is to assist other researchers who wish to make use of our collection. Besides working with a number of visitors studying medieval and modern coins here, I have had the pleasure to see some new publications appear based on research in our collection. I might point here to articles by Chad Leahy, who visited the ANS to study the types of coins circulating in Spain at the time of Cervantes, and by Luigi Feruglio, who made use of our collection for a study of the emergency coinage used by the Venetians during the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus in 1570.

Finally, my work on ANS publications over the past year included the editing and production work for The Banknotes of the Imperial Bank of Persia, by the late Michael Bonine, as well as editorial work on the volumes of the American Journal of Numismatics for this year as well as next year.

Return to FY2016 Annual Report