BOGGS, TUBMAN AND U.S. PAPER MONEY

   

The proposed Harriet Tubman $20 bill would not be the first time the famed abolitionist and women's suffragist appeared' on a United States banknote. The fascinating tale begins in the early 1990s, when the Money Artist J.S.G. Boggs came to Pittsburgh, invited by Carnegie Mellon's Center for the Advancement of Applied Ethics (CAAE).

He spent the first month or so at the home of Robert Cavalier, a member of CAAE specializing in interactive multimedia. While there, he made a number of phone calls to England costing about $90. Boggs reimbursed Cavalier with a newly drawn $100 bill featuring a young Harriet Tubman. Therein lies a tale – one involving artists, historians, philosophers, and numismatists along with the US Treasury.

A 1989 profile of Boggs by The New Yorker's Lawrence Weschler piqued the Center's interest in approaching Boggs and using his work in a new project.

The Center's Director, Preston Covey, figured out a way to hire him as a scholar-in-residence. Boggs liked the honorific offering and jumped at the opportunity to use the Center's new imaging technologies. He was just getting into using color and Photoshop and produced the first version of ‘coloured money'. This is how Boggs came to ‘reimburse' Cavalier with his Tubman bill (creatively choosing a younger image of her).

Boggs was not a political activist except when it came to the freedom to express himself through his art. But he could certainly be characterized as a liberal in many matters. This was most probably the reason that he selected Harriet Tubman for his first piece in color, using the British spelling coloured art. He also wanted to show an imagined young Harriet Tubman, one not scarred by the life of an American slave.

Art is often a vehicle for expressing political thought. With his Women's Series, Boggs sought to bring attention to the gallery of old white men depicted on our currency, opening the door to future honorees of different eras, races, and genders.

Was Boggs a seer or trailblazer? He certainly visualized a new world in which our nation's money is more inclusive and reflective of the actual populace. But bringing that vision to fruition is a lengthy, fraught, and frustrating start/stop process. Boggs, who died in 2017, would not live to see Tubman on a U.S. Federal Reserve Note.

To read the complete article, see:
Tubman, Jackson, and Boggs: How Art Predicted the Future of US Paper Money (https://coinweek.com/paper-money-2/tubman-jackson-and-boggs-how-art-predicted-the-future-of-us-paper-money/)

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