Art & HueMoney Talks: Art, Society & Power, a new exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum Oxford
Running until the 5th of January 2025, the exhibition “Money Talks: Art, Society & Power” delves into the complex, tense and often comic relationship between art, money and society.
The exhibition offers an insight into the painstaking process and creativity involved in the production of money across the globe and throughout history.
Works on display include Chris Levine’s 3D lenticular (hologram) of The Queen (which Art & Hue had the pleasure to see a variation of whilst it was in development in 1998), as well as the sculpture by Arnold Machin created for use on postage stamps.
The show opens with a very rare set of coins with a complicated design process: those planned for Edward VIII. Edward’s challenging brief to his designers was to produce a “modern” coinage. After heated negotiations over the final designs, the King abdicated, so the coins exist only as “patterns”.
The exhibition is also showing Susan Stockwell’s Money Dress, a sculpture of a Victorian gown made entirely from worldwide banknotes. The artist’s original intention was to use only notes depicting women, but as these are so rare, they are confined to the collar, belt and cuffs. Also on display, Grayson Perry’s Comfort Blanket is a tapestry based on a £10 note, that explores the relationship between British national identity and capital.
The exhibition features banknote artwork by Franz Matsch, Gustav Klimt and Koloman Moser, and the final section considers the future of money in the wake of technological advances.
Tickets for the exhibition are available online.
No visit to a museum would be complete without, as Banksy so aptly put it, an “exit through the gift shop”.
The shop at the Ashmolean has a wide range of items to complement the exhibition, including Warhol’s Dollar prints, fashion accessories adorned with Gustav Klimt, jewellery featuring rare coin designs from the Museum’s collection, plus organic t-shirts with artworks from the Ashmolean pop art collection by Art & Hue.
You can also discover The Treasured Collection of paints by Graphenstone in the shop as well as pick up some of the Art & Hue prints with a frame.
The exhibition “Money Talks: Art, Society & Power” is on until the 5th of January 2025 at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford with tickets available to pre-book online here.
Discover the Ashmolean pop art collection by Art & Hue, available in three sizes and 12 colours closely matched to The Treasured Collection of paints by Graphenstone inspired by the Museum’s exhibits.
The Treasured Collection contains 16 paint hues in total, inspired by exhibits from the Ashmolean’s collections, including works by Turner, Stradivarius, Raphael, Ruskin & Uccello, as well as by the grade I listed building itself.
For example, the colour option Ashmolean Stone is inspired by the classical façade of Britain’s oldest public Museum and College Cream is influenced by J. M. W. Turner’s painting of Oxford’s High Street.
Discover Art & Hue’s Ashmolean pop art prints here and below, visit the Ashmolean’s website here, and order a colour card of The Treasured Collection by Graphenstone here.
To read about more Graphenstone paints, visit here to discover the The Treasured Collection in collaboration with the Ashmolean Museum.
Discover more Graphenstone paints, this time with an Italian flavour, in the collaboration with interiors writer and journalist Kate Watson-Smyth of Mad About the House.
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Ashmolean Museum
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Ashmolean Column
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Ashmolean Oxford
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Ashmolean Zeus
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Ashmolean Gallery
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Ashmolean Exhibition
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Ashmolean Exterior Trio
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Ashmolean Interior Trio
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Ashmolean Group
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