BANK OF ENGLAND MUSEUM REVAMP ON HOLD

 

The Bank of England has shelved a £250,000 plan to revamp its museum, adding at least a year to more than five years of debate about how to provide a focal point for financial education in England and Wales.

In the time since officials at the Bank began considering a revamp of the only money museum in England and Wales, a string of museums have opened or been overhauled at a cost of more than £100m.

The Bank's museum is housed on the ground floor of its grade-I listed building on Threadneedle Street and displays rare coins, cash registers and a collection that includes historically prominent women on banknotes. An exhibition on the City's links to slavery closes next month.

The most prominent exhibition in recent years to debate the importance of money was staged last year at the Fitzwilliam Museum, which is funded by the University of Cambridge.

Under the title, Defaced! Money, Conflict, Protest, the show focused on money as a medium for protest and dissent and highlighted the small defacements on coins and notes, which revealed the opinions of people who otherwise went unheard.

Much of the exhibition is on tour, but not in the UK – it can now be seen at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada.

Dr Richard Kelleher, the exhibition's curator, says: There was a noticeable demographic shift in the age of visitors to Defaced! compared with other shows, with the biggest proportion in the 45-54 range and a definite increase in the number of younger people coming to the museum.

He added: Part of the appeal of exhibitions about money is their ability to connect with the visitor. For better of worse money is a constant part of our lives and we all have a relationship with cash.

We covet it, don't have enough of it, try to hide it, worry about it, try to grow it. For these reasons and others we have a means to connect. Money exhibitions can play a powerful role in developing visitors' financial literacy; particularly driving a better understanding of the banking system, debt, assets and liabilities, inflation and concepts of value, through creative presentations of the history of money.

The largest and most advanced money museum in the world is the Interactive Museum of Economics in Mexico City. Funded by the central bank, government departments, big commercial banks and financial institutions, but with an independent charter, it is housed in a refurbished convent in the heart of the city.

Among exhibits of old coins, the museum boasts a trading room with virtual reality headsets that can turn a classroom of children into day traders. There is also a Future of Money room that allows visitors see how digital money is created and to experiment with different ways to pay electronically.

There are no proposals to set up an independent economics or money museum in the UK and a revamp of either of the existing museums in London or Edinburgh seems a long way off.

To read the complete article, see:
Money matters: why museums could help Britain's poor financial literacy (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/30/money-museum-financial-literacy-uk-bank-of-england-education)

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