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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;AncientJoe, post: 1927948, member: 44357&quot;]I just spent the better part of the last week in NYC and a good portion of that trip was to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I didn&#039;t expect to see any coins but they did have a very nice array as part of their very impressive Greek exhibit, with an Athens dekadrachm, Twelve Caesars set in varied metals, and a few dozen fine style Greek silver/gold coins. Unfortunately, some of the coins were heavily smoothed and repatinated but to those not in-the-know, they were still visually strong examples. </p><p><br /></p><p>It pales in comparison to what the British Museum has on display (their Akragas dekadrachm is to die for) but it is still probably about the right amount of what I would expect to see there.</p><p><br /></p><p>Coins are not as obviously impressive as a large marble sculpture, but I think museums could do a bit more work to make them more accessible. I went to the Chicago Art Institute Museum last summer and thought they did it well. They had some coins suspended in glass cases and others with iPads in-front of them with quality images and descriptions.</p><p><br /></p><p>I find the disconnect between value and display prominence intriguing: they had a common Mark Antony/Octavia cistophorus in a glass display to show it on all sides and a wonderful mint state Otho aureus just alongside a number of other quality aurei in a table-top display.</p><p><br /></p><p>To the post about being three feet away from coins: most of these museums let you get quite close. In all of the displays I&#039;ve seen, my face is generally just a few inches away from the coins, losing none of the detail. The British Museum has a particularly fantastic display of the history of money (sponsored by Citibank - that&#039;s some quality product placement!) including an EID MAR and Colosseum sestertius, as well as a curator allowing you to hold a heavily polished Athens tetradrachm.</p><p><br /></p><p>Personally, I would love for museums to sell off their collections of coins, but I think they still serve a purpose and I&#039;ve always seen several people admiring them, so they must draw interest.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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