Kampmann abstract 2007
The opposite way - launch of a virtual museum: the private MoneyMuseum in Zurich: Ursula Kampmann, MoneyMuseum, Zurich
In April 1999 the MoneyMuseum went online. This was early and happened before all the classical coin cabinets were talking about publishing their inventory on the Internet. At the beginning the MoneyMuseum’s homepage consisted of the coins from the collection of Dr. Jürg Conzett and included historical and numismatic commentaries on each single piece. Imparting numismatic knowledge was not the main reason for this website. The initiator Jürg Conzett was interested in something else: he wanted to promote thinking about money. Therefore a test was created which offered the user of the website the possibility to find out about his money personality. The MoneyMuseum’s director offered his personal advice concerning the way to deal with money and monthly news about money and its applications from all over the world were presented. This website is still the basis of the MoneyMuseum. It is actualized several times a month.
Reflecting the way each of us deals with money has stayed the central focus of the MoneyMuseum, even now after a material annex has been opened in Hadlaubstraße / Zurich. There it owns a big room for the permanent and a smaller room for changing exhibitions. At the Hadlaubstraße the visitor will find – besides the traditional coin exhibition – an extensive offer of new media, among them books, radio plays produced by radio MoneyMuseum, DVDs and movies. Among the subjects treated you will find historic-numismatic themes (e.g. the invention of the Roman denarius, Diocletian’s monetary reform or minting technology between 1500 and today), social-political changes (e.g. alternative currencies) and money philosophy (30 brazen lies about money).
During the past years several exhibitions have been made in cooperation with the Swiss Landesmuseum. Each is consequently based on new media and non-numismatic conceptions. The latest project was an exhibition named “The people of Zurich and their money” at the Museum Bärengasse. Its center is formed by a historical course that does not focus on the numismatic object, but on the way people might have used this object in the past. In order to describe this relation audio features and drawings were created which illustrate a historical situation in which the very objects played its role.
This presentation will deliver a survey of the most important products of the MoneyMuseum. It will give also an insight into the conception of the exhibition “The people of Zurich and their money”.
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