Ute Wartenberg

Dr. Ute Wartenberg
Research Curator and President

Ute Wartenberg is Research Curator and President of the American Numismatic Society. She is also an Adjunct Member of the Department of Classics at Columbia University. For most of her career, she served as Executive Director of the ANS. Her first professional appointment was in 1991, where she worked for seven years as Curator of ancient Greek coins at the British Museum in London. Wartenberg began her undergraduate studies in history, Classical Archaeology, and Greek literature in Saarbrücken, Germany. A Rhodes Scholar, she completed a DPhil in Classics at Oxford University. In her thesis, she edited administrative and legal texts from Roman Egypt as well as fragments from the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes. Recently, she has revived her interest in Greek literature, in particular Homer and Hellenistic poetry, but her main research is focused on Greek numismatics.

Wartenberg has curated exhibitions at the British Museum and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which cover subjects from coinage in the Peloponnesian War to the fight of the US Secret Service against counterfeit money. As part of her public service, she has been a member and chair of several committees and boards including the German Rhodes Scholar Selection Committee, the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, the International Numismatic Council, and the International Committee for Money and Banking Museums. Wartenberg is a Numismatic Ambassador (2001), a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (2008) and was awarded the Ehrenpreis der Gesellschaft für Internationale Geldgeschichte (2015).

Full CV on Academia.edu

Research

Dr. Wartenberg is the author or editor of over 100 publications about Archaic and Classical Greek coinages, with a particular focus on hoards and archaic and classical coinage, but also issues surrounding cultural property, collecting through the ages as well as papyrology. She is currently finishing a project about the Achaemenid coinage of Daskyleion. Another major project is a database, in which she (with Wolfgang Fischer-Bossert) attempts to create a typology of all known early electrum coins. She also hopes to finish a die-study of the Thessalian mint of Pherai.

Publications:

Recent articles and chapters:

Co-editor with A. Meadows, PRESBEUS. Studies in Ancient Coinage Presented to Richard Ashton (New York: American Numismatic Society, 2021).

Co-editor with P. van Alfen, White Gold: Studies in Early Electrum Coinage (New York and Jerusalem: American Numismatic Society and Israel Museum, 2020), which received the 2020 Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Book on Ancient Topic.

With Barbora Dimitričenko, “Plenitudinous: An Analysis of Ancient Coin Sales on eBay,” in L Hashemi and L. Shelly (eds.), Antiquities Smuggling: In the Real and the Virtual World (London and New York: Routledge, 2022), pp. 193-217.

“A Persian Queen on the Black Sea: The Coinages of Amastris and Herakleia,” in A. Meadows and U. Wartenberg (eds.), Presbeus. Studies in Ancient Coinage Presented to Richard Ashton (New York: American Numismatic Society, 2021), pp. 65-78.

“Thracian Identity and Coinage in the Archaic and Classical Period,” in U. Peter and V. Stolba (eds.), Thrace. Local Coinage and Regional Identity. Berlin Studies of the Ancient World 77 (Berlin: Exzellenzcluster Topoi der Freien Universität
Berlin und der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2021), pp. 46-64.

“A Hoard of Archaic Obols of Aegina (Coin Hoards VIII.20),” in R. Ciolek and R. Chowaniec (eds.), Aleksanderia. Studies on Items, Ideas and History Dedicated to Professor Aleksander Bursche on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2021), pp. 379-392.

“Was there an Ionian Revolt Coinage?,”, in P. van Alfen and U. Wartenberg (eds.), White Gold: Studies in Early Electrum Coinage (New York and Jerusalem: American Numismatic Society and Israel Museum, 2020), pp. 569-640.

“Early Portraits of Alexander the Great: The Numismatic Evidence,” S.A. Hemingway and K. Karoglou (eds.), Art of the Hellenistic Kingdoms: from Pergamon to Rome (New York and New Haven: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2019), pp. 23-30.

with L.L. Van Loon, A.J.Nelson, K. Barron, and N.R. Banerjeek,”Bubbles in the Bullion: Micro-CT Imaging of the Internal Structure of Ancient Coins,”, Microsc. Microanal. 25, Suppl. 2, (2019): 420-421.