Throughout the month of August, at 11 quai de Conti, it is possible to travel for free. Monnaie de Paris welcomes visitors to its majestic hotel to discover its new exhibition Coins and Wonders. From the Varin lounge to the Antoine lounge, you can travel and discover surprising currencies and transaction objects.
Because if the word surprising seems strong, it is an understatement in the face of the many finds of Bérénice Geoffroy Schneiter, curator of the exhibition: “I wanted to make people discover the place and present the currency in a poetic and non-economic way”. Adornments, scepters, masks, or even rolls of feathers, these rare objects and sometimes neglected by museums transport the spectator for an hour.
Travel still
Asia, Oceania, Africa and Europe, almost all continents are represented in this exhibition. Through the different civilizations, the viewer discovers how they thought about their exchanges. For Bérénice Geoffroy Schneiter, it’s a “world tour in 200 currencies”.
A striking expedition as in the Benjamin Franklin salon, where visitors are immersed in the heart of the Talipun. These masks made of a shell were used as currency for the Yangoru-Boiken population in Papua New Guinea. “Very rare objects” and which are often found “in the reserves of museums and are not exhibited”, specifies the specialist.
Accessible to the general public
It is therefore to allow everyone to discover that money is not only attached to the economic sphere, that the exhibition opens its doors free of charge in August. But for the exhibition curator, it is also a double challenge: “Often the exhibitions are very expensive, or always attract the same audience. We wanted to bring in people who don’t know the place and who don’t have the chance to go on a trip”.
The opportunity for young and old alike to visit the Hôtel de la Monnaie while discovering one of the most important parts of our history. And then, here at 20 Minutes, we always prefer when it’s free…