NUMISMATIC ART IN NEW YORK

An installment of Steve Roach & Dennis Tucker's "Collecting Friends" blog series highlights some interesting numismatic art in Mexico, NY and New York City. Here's an excerpt - see the complete article online.

First, Dennis Tucker relates a visit to Mexico, New York. -Editor

... I want to focus on a huge surprise that awaited me in Mexico—specifically, a huge COIN! When we pulled into the parking lot across from the museum, the last thing I expected to see was a gigantic silver half dollar. And yet, there it was, in mural form, on the side of the Town Hall building.

Mexico, New York mural closeup Walking Liberty Half Dollar

It was a Walking Liberty half dollar, dated 2004 (the year it was painted by Syracuse artist Kenneth C. Burke), and it's part of a mural called "Mexico—Path to Freedom."

This northeastern New York town was very important in the passage of slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad in the early 1800s. In a plaque accompanying the mural, the Walking Liberty half dollar is identified as symbolic of the "financial support of freedom" offered by Mexico's businessmen.

A numismatist might ask, "Why not show a Liberty Seated half dollar, the type minted from the 1830s to the 1890s?" That's what would have been in circulation during the Underground Railroad era, when abolitionists like Mexico tinsmith Starr Clark risked their businesses (and their own safety) to support others' freedom.

The town's connection to the Walking Liberty half dollar was explained to me by Mexico Historical Society volunteer Jim Hotchkiss. "Audrey Munson, the artist's inspiration for Miss Liberty on the half dollar, lived in Mexico before she became America's most famous model, and again after her career crashed," Jim told me. He's assembled a collection of Munsonabilia that includes postcards, magazine articles, sculptures, and other mementoes.

Numismatists know many of the artists she posed for. They included coin and medal designers like Robert Aitken, John Flanagan, Daniel Chester French, and Adolph A. Weinman.

Then, Steve Roach chimes in with a New York City sculpture I was unfamiliar with. -Editor

I found one of my favorite pieces of art incorporating coins while exploring downtown New York City a few years ago. Margie Hughto's 1997 work titled Trade, Treasure and Travel is at the Cortlandt Street station of the R and W trains. It consists of various ceramic relief tiles that were re-installed in 2011 in the new underpass connecting the Cortlandt station with the nearby Fulton Center, after the destruction of the World Trade Center a decade earlier.

Trade, Treasure and Travel mural closeup

The artist said that she thought about the history of the financial district, when Cortlandt street ended at a busy ferry landing on the Hudson River. She shared, "I thought about the different peoples, products, objects and money that passed through the area, and I visualized a treasure vault filled with coins, gems and artifacts – rich, golden, glowing and somewhat mysterious." Renditions of Peace dollars, Standing Liberty quarter dollars, Kennedy half dollars, Indian Head cents and Indian Head 5-cent pieces are seen, alongside fanciful interpretations of $1 Federal Reserve Notes and plenty of other coins both real and imagined.

The work consists of 11 separate, but thematically related panels made of ceramic tiles, with plenty of coins alongside compasses, boats, streetcars, keys, ships, and animals both real (bulls and bears) and imagined (griffins and a sphinx). The reliefs were made in the artist's Jamestown, New York, studio and students from the School of Art and Design at Syracuse University assisted. Every time I look at them, I always find something new to enjoy.