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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;krispy, post: 2016866, member: 19065&quot;]Thanks for the write up and thoughts. I&#039;ve never visited that gallery but have been to the Wash U. Art Museum in the past, specifially to look at their modern art exhibitions. On a recent visit to the St. Louis Art Museum in Forest Park, just across the way from the University, I can&#039;t recall seeing ANY coins on display, not even among the Greek and Roman collections.</p><p><br /></p><p>Coins are often considered problematic for display in many museums. Curatorial staff even like to clean the coins! Coin displays are not really set up for collectors and usually exist just to show the depth of a museum&#039;s holdings and flesh out the history of an era&#039;s other works, like in an Ancient gallery.&nbsp; Coins are usually considered difficult for museums to keep on display or to warrant devoting enough floor/vitrine/wall space. They are problematic in that they often can&#039;t show visitors all sides of the coins. Many museums even sell their coins as they take up space and sit in storage recesses of curatorial departments going unseen and uncalled for in&nbsp; academic research. Being so small in a display, thus hard to see behind a case, under glass and such, they lack much WOW factor. Many museums consider all this and opt to sell them for money and freeing up storage and display space for greater works.</p><p><br /></p><p>A few years back, The Augustus Saint-Gaudens show in New York&#039;s Metropolitan Museum of Art focused on his lifetime achievements and provided a historical context for his work, but totally underwhelmed the very small display of coins, of which substantial early examples were lent and shown, but only one side and nothing you could hover over and view in intimate detail. I was, however, happy to attend and shared thoughts about it in <a href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/augustus-saint-gaudens-in-the-metropolitan-museum-of-art-june-30th-november-15-20.58690/" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/augustus-saint-gaudens-in-the-metropolitan-museum-of-art-june-30th-november-15-20.58690/">this thread</a>, at the time.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ultimately, for museums, I think their coin collections are best served to public study utilizing museums&#039; digital libraries of collection holdings. Many museums are actively adding all works to their database of holdings and they encourage the public to use these libraries, but it&#039;s not always nice to look at art or objects on a digital display. Say when looking at say a gilt 13th Century Italian altar panel on a digital screen you would ever enjoy the subtly and delicacy of paint, nor sense the scale of a monumental sized chuck of modern sculpture that&#039;s physically larger than you. Coins however are becoming (due to online forums, auctions, shopping, etc.) much more common and properly imaged for sharing between those who regard them.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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