March 2021 eNews
Upcoming Events & Announcements
Money Talks: “Scenes from an Exposition: Columbus, Coins, Ships and Controversy in 1890s America”
The Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago, was organized ostensibly to celebrate Columbus’ landfall in the Caribbean 400 years before. On April 24, Chief Curator Dr.Peter van Alfen will explore the origins of the Exposition and Columbus’ popularity in 19th century America (and subsequent downfall in the 20th), the ANS’s vast holdings of coins, medals, and tokens from the fair and the disputes between artists and officials over the production of some items.More…
The Planchet: The ANS in the Time of COVID
In the second episode of Season 2, host Andrew Reinhard interviews different members of the ANS staff about how they worked from home during the pandemic, and what it was like returning to the New York office full-time. Listen and Subscribe.
The Lyceum begins!
The ANS Lyceum—a new online educational program offering interactive lectures with ANS curators—began today, March 31. The inaugural six-week course is led by Peter van Alfen on Coins from the Archaic to Hellenistic periods. The second offering from ANS Lyceum will be on Roman coinage, taught by Assistant Curator Lucia Carbone and Executive Director Gilles Bransbourg, beginning late May.
New episode of Greatest Coins: The Athenian Owl
In this episode, Peter van Alfen looks at the mystery of the beginnings of the Athenian “owl” coinage, one of the most widely used and widely circulating coinages of the ancient Greek world. This episode is accompanied by a longer video spanning the 500 year history of the coin.
The ANS Partners with EBSCOhost
The ANS recently partnered with EBSCO to make digital editions of all of its monographs available to institutions of higher learning worldwide via library access to EBSCOhost. Contact your librarian to see if you have access. Older monographs are available to individuals for free through HathiTrust and the ANS Digital Library.
April Long Tables
Our outside curator for April will be Dr. Julien Olivier from Bibliothèque nationale de France, who will speak on their Ptolemaic collection. Executive Director Gilles Bransbourg will present on the French franc, Oliver Hoover will tell “Seleucid Ghost Stories,” and ANS President Ute Wartenberg will speak with David Tripp about the fascinating tale of the double eagle. More…
March in Review
A Virtual Conference on the R. B. Witschonke Collection
Co-sponsored by the ANS and the Ph.D. Program in History at the Graduate Center, CUNY, Coinage of the Roman Provinces before Provincial Coinage Conference, was a great success! Over 300 people registered to attend at least one of the 11 papers presented. We are delighted to welcome some new student members sponsored by Prof. Joel Allen, CUNY, and ANS Trustee David Hendin. Thanks to their generosity, we were able to raffle off 20 student memberships to participants of the conference.
Peter van Alfen at the Art Institute of Chicago
ANS Chief Curator Peter van Alfen virtually joined Elizabeth Hahn Benge, collection manager of arts of Africa and arts of the ancient Mediterranean and Byzantium at the Art Institute of Chicago, to speak on ancient coins and the powers that minted them. Watch now.
March Money Talks
On March 27, Assistant Curator Jesse Kraft gave us a look at the American colonial paper currency in the ANS Collection. In a New World devoid of metallic currency, most colonies in the British American colonies had begun to issue paper currency within the first decades of the 18th century. Dr. Kraft discussed counterfeit and altered notes, sheets and bundles of unissued currency, as well as lottery tickets, local money, and other non-conventional paper issues.
New on YouTube
Assistant Professor of Classical Studies and Assistant Curator of Numismatics at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan and ANS Summer Seminar alumni, Dr. Irene Soto Marín’s February Money Talks, “The Question of Gold in Fourth-Century Egypt,” is now available on YouTube, covering the gold solidus—one of the most iconic objects of Late Antiquity. Watch now.
Andrew Reinhard published
Director of Publications Andrew Reinhard published two research articles in March. “Archaeology of Abandoned Human Settlements in No Man’s Sky: A New Approach to Recording and Preserving User-Generated Content in Digital Games,” appeared in Games and Culture. Near Eastern Archaeology 84.1 published “Colossal Cave Archaeology: Epigraphy, FORTRAN Code-Artifacts, and the Ur-Game.”
March Long Tables
Our visiting curator was Prof. Dr. Bernhard Weisser, Director of Berlin Coin Cabinet. From closer to home, ANS Trustee and chairperson of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) Mary Lannin spoke on the role of the CCAC; Saltus Award Winner Eugene Daub discussed his medallic artistic process; and Assistant Curator Lucia Carbone gave an overview of the Witshconke conference. More…
