Money Talks: Art, Society & Power. This item is unavailable.Money Talks: Art, Society & Power

• Art that immortalises, reflects and provokes us to explore the place of money in our world - Art as sometimes subversive or irreverent and always revealing
• Covers topics from ancient coins to Rembrandt to Warhol and Jamie Reid's depiction of the Queen
• Exploring art’s role in the future of money, including NFTs and "financialisation"
• Accompanies a major exhibition at the Ashmolean, Oxford, 10 Aug 2024 – 5 Jan 2025

This book aims to tell the story of social history through Money. Money and Art have shared a long history. Both words are metaphors derived from Latin terms used over 2,000 years ago. The word Money derives its modern meaning as the general term for all means of payment from its use as the word for coins in the pre-modern period. Particularly since the introduction of paper money, the word was applied to coins because of the name of the place where coins were made in ancient Rome, the temple of Juno Moneta (Juno the Warner), from this name the word moneta came to mean mint in Latin, and later the product of a mint, i.e. coins.

The word Art acquired its modern usage, meaning works of art, both singularly and collectively, from the Latin 'ars' meaning a skill, and it has so been used in English to describe any form of skill, but gradually from the nineteenth century, the word came to signify the product rather than the skill, particularly in relation to painting, graphic works and sculpture.

This eclectic collection of stories brings together a multitude of perspectives through collections from the Ashmolean and around the world ― from Art Nouveau banknotes and global portrayals of prosperity to activist Money Art. Deep dives into compelling stories reveal humour, hidden surprises and a tension between the power of money and the playfulness of art.

Shailendra Bhandare is Assistant Keeper, South Asian and Far-eastern Numismatics and Paper Money Collections, a Fellow of St Cross College and a member of Faculty of Oriental Studies. He started his career as a Numismatist with a visiting fellowship at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge. He was then appointed as a post-doctoral fellow of the Society for South Asian Studies, and worked as a curator in the British Museum on the coins of Later Mughals and the Indian Princely States. He was appointed as curator of coins in the Ashmolean Museum in 2002. He was born and brought in Mumbai, India where he received his first degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences. He holds a Masters degree in History and a Doctorate in Ancient Indian Culture awarded by the University of Mumbai.