In this virtual back to class video available until August 31, Associate Professor Desmond Fitz-Gibbon will take us on a journey through the Mount Holyoke Art Museum exhibit Money Matters: Meaning, Power, and Change in the History of Currency, and how the Art Museum is being used as a classroom for students.

Money comes in a surprising multitude of forms and serves a variety of functions. We can trade it, we can hoard it, we can use it to measure our debts. However, Money Matters: Meaning, Power, and Change in the History of Currency demonstrates that money is much more. The objects on view, ranging from Mesopotamian clay tablets to 18th- and 19th-century American account books and counterfeit bank notes, reveal how money portrays the shape of societies and records moments in time. Money makes apparent histories of power, but also histories of everyday life, of trust, of social transformation, and even of war and revolution. The artifacts and ideas presented in Money Matters were inspired by students enrolled in “History of Money,” a course taught by Associate Professor Desmond Fitz-Gibbon.