FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY EXHIBIT COMES TO MOAF

Loreen Williamson and Pamela Thomas know that there are funkier figures in history than Booker T. Washington. Bear with them, though, and they will connect the dots that landed him in the Museum of UnCut Funk.

The visage of Mr. Washington, the 19th-century author and educator, is printed on a 1947 half-dollar coin featured in “For the Love of Money,” an exhibition of blacks on United States currency at the Museum of American Finance in Manhattan, on view through January. The show, with more than 35 coins, tokens, medallions and medals that celebrate black history leaders, events and institutions, is on loan from the Museum of UnCut Funk, the online destination for all things funky, which Ms. Williamson and Ms. Thomas began to curate about a decade ago.

“I bet you didn’t know there was all this money with actual black people on it,” Ms. Thomas said. “And I doubt anybody knows the process that was undertaken to get these people put on currency.” That process includes presidential authorization only after two-thirds of both the House and the Senate have first voted to approve the idea, she explained. “If you look at it from the perspective of, ‘Well, damn, I had no idea about this,’” she said, “that makes it pretty funky.”

Ms. Williamson continued, “This may be our most traditional show in that it’s the kind of thing you’d expect to see in a black history exhibition.” She and Ms. Thomas founded the funk museum, which usually focuses more on pop culture, in 2007. Besides Mr. Washington, other figures whose images are cast in bronze, gold and silver within the single-room show on Wall Street in the financial district include Joe Louis, Bessie Coleman and the Tuskegee Airmen.

A few of the objects, like a 2016 Harpers Ferry National Historical Park quarter, representing Washington, D.C., and another from Washington, featuring the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, issued in 2017, are currently in circulation. But most, like two for President Barack Obama from his first and second terms in office, and Rosa Parks’s 1999 bronze medal, were pressed strictly to honor the subject, not to be used as money. Still, they represent what Ms. Williamson called a funky twist in how people think about the United States Mint.

1978 bronze medal of the singer Marian Anderson

Ms. Thomas and Ms. Williamson started to promote “For the Love of Money,” one of five traveling Museum of UnCut Funk shows, in response to the news that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill in 2020. The exhibition’s title is a nod to the O’Jays tune.

“We sort of realized that things have come full circle, with happy slaves being depicted picking cotton on Confederate currency just before the Civil War, to Obama’s bronze medals for being the first African-American president, to Harriet Tubman being on the new 20 and Sojourner Truth having a turn on the 10 and Marian Anderson being on the 5 in 2020 — which I hope still happens,” Ms. Thomas said.

To read the complete article, see:
The Money Museum Gets Funky (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/nyregion/the-museum-of-uncut-funk.html)

For more information on the Museum of American Finance, see:
https://www.moaf.org/

To visit the Museum of Uncut Funk, see:
http://museumofuncutfunk.com/

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
RECENT COINWEEK VIDEOS AND PODCASTS : Podcast #37: UnCut Funk: African-American Representation and Money (http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n30a17.html)
EXHIBIT: FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY (http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n37a19.html)

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