Money Worries

Money is a frequent source of anxiety and stress in our daily lives. How do we get it? How do we keep it? What do we do with it once we have it? Bank notes are fundamentally promissory notes that generate and structure interpersonal and social relations. How does that affect our understanding of our own self-worth, the value we place on others, and our relationships to them? The “flip-side” of making value is making inequality. This exhibition aims to disrupt visitors’ received attitudes toward money, wealth, and poverty by examining various forms of antique and modern currency and anachronistic juxtapositions of historical and contemporary depictions in art of financial transactions, allegories, and portraits.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.