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Exhibit Showcases Rare
African Currencies
Mike Hickman
SIPA News writer
The Rotunda at Columbia’s
Low Library last
March became the temporary
home for a rare
collection of iron and
copper currencies from
Central and West Africa. Only in the
last 20 years have these metal pieces
been recognized within art circles as an
important part of African history.
The exhibit was sponsored by
SIPA’s Institute of African Studies,
Columbia University Libraries, and
appropriately enough, Citibank and
Chase Manhattan Bank. The 200-
piece collection of tools, weapons,
musical instruments, ornaments,
objects of prestige and ingots revealed
the intrinsic value that iron and copper
have had in hundreds of African societies
since 500 A.D.
The pieces were loaned to the
Institute by Philip Gould, who curated
the exhibit. Gould is an art collector
and professor emeritus of art history at
Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville,
New York. According to Gould,
Africans liked to use iron and copper
pieces as instruments of exchange
because they could always be recast
into other objects.
“These currencies come in all
shapes and sizes and most of the
objects were easily recognized as symbols,”
Gould said. “But the relationship
was so close that the actual object
and the currency were interchangeable.”
In conjunction with the exhibit,
the Institute held a workshop for
Harlem-area teachers. The event was
led by the Institute’s outreach coordinator,
Paulette Young, and Aissata
Sidikou, a lecturer of Pan-African
Studies at Barnard College. Both
focused on the many uses of African
iron and copper currencies and the
central role of the blacksmith in
African communities past and present.
“Traditional African societies
were influenced by various factors both
internal and external,” said Young.
“The exhibit and writings on the subject
by African scholars are a good way
to teach students that African nations
did not operate in a vacuum.”
Iron and copper currencies continued
in use among some African
nations until the 1960s, when they
were abandoned in favor of paper and
coin money. Since then they have
become increasingly popular among
art collectors and dealers. Today, these
metals still symbolize power and freedom
to many Africans.
“It’s an area that people really
don’t know about,” Young told the
Paulette Young, outreach coordinator for
the Institute of African Studies, and Low
Library currency exhibit.
approximately 20 teachers who
attended the workshop.
At the workshop, teachers peered
curiously inside glass display cases at
elaborately carved hoes, shovels, and
iron spears. Malene Hawkins, who
teaches seventh graders at Frederick
Douglass Academy in Harlem, planned
to bring her students to the exhibit
during their studies of ancient African
societies. Teacher Curtis Lawrence said
the workshop will help him strengthen
the Africa content of his seventh-grade
history classes at the Academy.
The Low Library exhibit closed
on April 15, but another, smaller
exhibit of traditional African money is
on display through July 23 at the
Smithsonian’s National Museum of
African Art in Washington, D.C.
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