NEWARK MUSEUM COIN COLLECTION 上市 Deposited
The E-Sylum: Volume 7, Number 25, June 20, 2004, Article 13
NEWARK MUSEUM COIN COLLECTION
In response to last week's question about the Newark
Museum in New Jersey, Harry Waterson writes: "There is a
very good paper on the Newark Museum entitled "John
Cotton Dana and the Ideal Museum Collection of Medals"
by Dorothy Budd Bartle in The Medal In America edited by
Alan M. Stahl copyright 1988 by the American Numismatic
Society. Mr. Dana set the bar as ".,.. he worked to build
his ideal museum collection of medals and use it for the
common good".I have found this Museum to be especially helpful to me as
a medal collector. They e-mailed to me scans of 10 medals
I am interested in with speed, accuracy, a true willingness to
help and at no cost - an experience I find truly rare.I enjoy reading The E-Sylum. Quite often at the bottom of
the stream of books and pubs, I find the occasional medallic
nugget or two. Thank you very much."Denis Loring writes: "I can't tell you anything about the rest of
the collection, but I can say they have a decent group of large
cents. In 1985, I was engaged by the then-curator of the coin
collection, Ms. Dorothy Budd Bartle, to help them expand
their large cent holding. The goal was to assemble a "Red Book"
date and major variety set, with die variety sets of a few years
such as 1802 and 1817. Unfortunately, the project was never
completed, due (as you'd guess) by competing interests and
lack of funds."Our anonymous currency collector writes: "I believe The
Newark Museum does not always have numismatic displays.
It does have a very large collection of numismatic items (more
than could be displayed at once). Usually, these can be seen
by appointment only. At the current time, there is no numismatic
curator, although there have been several in the past, including
William Bischoff, formerly of the ANS. The numismatic
collections currently fall under the domain of the decorative arts
curator, Mr. Ulysses S. Dietz. Mr. Dietz is a direct descendant
of U.S. Grant, and was one of the Grant descendants who
negotiated with the National Park Service to improve the
condition of Grant's Tomb on Riverside Drive in New York.William Bischoff writes: "You ask in the 13 June E-Sylum, "Do
we have any readers from the Garden State who can tell us
about the coins and currency on display [at The Newark
Museum]?" It is ironic that the lengthy and accurate article
from the Star-Ledger you cite was written by Dan Bischoff
(no relation to me), but I can add some specific information on
the coin collection, since I was curator of numismatics at The
Newark Museum from 1991 to 1997.No curator has been named for this collection since I left, and
there is no regular numismatic exhibit open to the public, nor
is one planned. Approximately 35,000 specimens (coins, paper
money, medals and exonumia) are housed in the vault, however,
and might be available for viewing by someone with specific a
specific research interest. The strongest fields are U.S. gold;
African paper money; perhaps the finest American collections
of obsidional coinage (especially from the Netherlands); Spanish
Colonial treasure salvage; art medals (especially by John
Flannigan); and exonumia by the former Newark firm of
Whitehead & Hoag. Because, as the Star-Ledger article makes
clear, the emphasis at the Museum has always been educational,
not research-oriented, there are few duplicates suitable for die
studies and the like. Those with a legitimate research interest
are advised to contact the Associate Registrar, Scott Hankins,
at 973-596-6676.On a lighter note, readers may want to visit the Newark Museum
website at www.newarkmuseum.org and scroll down on the
home page to the interactive feature "Once Upon a Dime," put
on by the Children's Museum and sponsored by J.P.Morgan
Chase and others. For those with children (up to about 12 or
13 years of age) who can make it to Newark, a visit to the
physical exhibition would definitely be worthwhile. It is
scheduled to close in August 2005."- 2004-06-20
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