Curator & Collector

Apologies for the absence; blogging will be lighter, but will certainly continue. – The American Numismatic Society is being sued by the Hispanic Society for the return of thousands of valuable coins which had been “on permanent loan” to the ANS. In general, we tend to be suspect of these kinds of arrangements, as there [...]

Image of Johnstone Heritage Society Museum inside Morrison’s borrowed from the BBC A recent article from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, noting that “Everyone’s familiar with the big names atop Pittsburgh’s famous museums: Carnegie, Warhol, Heinz,” asks “But what about Kerr, Bayernhof and Burtner? Scattered across the suburbs are many more houses of history that might [...]

We have just created what we believe to be Canada’s first numismatic forum. [UPDATE: In fact, it is far from the first, and we may delete the forum, except for a section on token collecting.] The forum is dedicated to Canadian numismatics, as opposed to being only for Canadian people; accordingly, Americans with an interest [...]

Canadians may not see these monetary denominations much longer A Quebec financial company, the Desjardins Group, recently made headlines when it suggested that Canada drop the penny and the nickel, and replace the five dollar bill with a coin of the same denomination. (Also see this link at the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business.) [...]

A Sikh organization in India, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, was successful in lobbying Sotheby’s to cancel its plans to auction an armour suit believed to have belonged to the tenth guru, Gobind Singh. The group wrote a letter to the Queen, and was prepared to to take its protest to the United Nations in [...]

An exhibit in a Catholic Museum in Vienna recently sparked a controversy after one of the artworks showed a homosexual orgy transpiring at the Last Supper. The art was being exhibited in a retrospective titled “Religion, Flesh, and Power,” a tribute to the eighty year-old Alfred Hrdlicka, one of Austria’s leading artists. Other artwork displayed [...]

We had to email our webhosting company, Hostpapa, after Curator & Collector disappeared last night. They didn’t tell us what caused the problem, but we’re pleased they fixed it. We’ll have more posting today!

Image of a literal Lady Britannia taken from the Daily Mail We continue to follow the story of Lady Britannia with great pleasure and interest, thanks to the Daily Mail’s continued and devoted–and humorous–coverage. The recent redesign of British coinage left her without a presence on circulating coins. Now, a “senior advisor” with the Royal [...]

We are happy that the Quebec City armoury that burned down a few days ago did not also see the loss of the bulk of its archives that were stored there. The armoury was built in 1884, and housed WWI and WWII memorabilia, as well as material pertaining to the Louis Riel rebellion. – UPDATE: [...]

Image of the new Royal Mint coins borrowed from the BBC The Royal Mint has just unveiled its new currency designs for all coin denominations, and although some people might find reasons to disapprove of the new designs, we very much like them! Each coin depicts a part of the Great Shield. The entire scheme [...]