Aims
What is money? Where does it come from? What do we do with it? And what does it do with us? These are the kinds of questions which the MoneyMuseum – the museum platform of the Sunflower Foundation – deals with.
The MoneyMuseum – in 1999 as one of the first online museums on the history of money and currency to be put on the Internet and since 2003 to exist at Hadlaubstrasse with physical exhibition rooms – is a visible expression of Jürg Conzett's desire to make his coin collection available to the general public. And he did this from the realisation that coins are eloquent witnesses to their times. They tell us of power and powerlessness, stability and change, highlights and crises in the economic, political and social conditions of a country.
Contemporary witnesses to monetary affairs are also at the centre of the changing exhibitions at Hadlaubstrasse, their exhibits documenting the main areas of the Western development of money from antiquity to modern times. The collection is constantly growing and in the meantime also comprises pre-numismatic or traditional means of payment, which, among other things, allow us to gain an insight into parts of the Eastern, Arab and African history of money.
The exhibitions are surrounded by coin presses and a range of multimedia equipment which offers the public background information and enables the visitors to experience a lively, interactive visit to the museum.
It is the aim of the MoneyMuseum to send its visitors on a fascinating journey through the world of money. This journey should encourage them to consider their own relationship to money and show how very much the dynamic, often tense relationship between money and power – or rather money and man – threads its way through history to this day.
