Open your screens as a family and delve into ancient trading practices, make your own money, and create your own cool coins in this collaborative family day with the OI Museum and Smart Museum of Art!

For this minds-open hands-on trade-stravaganza, OI educator Calgary Trautman-Haines and Smart Scholar Katerina Stefanescu will take you on a virtual tour of the OI Museum and Smart Museum’s collections of coins and trading tools and then you’ll use your new knowledge to craft your own coins to trade within your own household! Have a pencil, piece of paper, scissors, and aluminum foil at the ready to create brand new coins of your very own!

FREE, open to all. Please register in advance for link »

Artmaking at home

For a deeper dive, head on over to the Smart Museum’s Family Day video series to learn more about how ancient cultures created clay balls containing a cache of secret clay tokens, carve a round seal out of a candle, and dig a hole to make a bowl!

A collaboration between the OI and Smart Museum, this fun family day connects your kids with all things coins, tools, and trading. Drawing from the OI’s exhibitions and the Smart Museum’s permanent collection of objects of trade and Medici coins, we’ll be making aluminum coins, carving candle cylinder seals, creating clay token balls, and making clay grain bowls together! The Smart and OI are also excited to collaborate with University of Chicago student and Smart Scholar, Katerina Stefenescu on this family program based on her in-depth research of the Smart and OI’s collection and how it can be used in educational settings with families. Through a tour and hands-on activities inspired by the ancient world, participants will develop a better understanding of the day-to-day function and form of coins, currency, and ancient trading practices.

Special Guest Bio

Katerina Stefenescu is a third-year student in the College and a Smart Scholar for the 2019–2020 academic year. She studies Art History and History, is a member of the Smart’s Student Advisory Committee, and interns with Sara Arnas in the Smart Museum’s Development department. Katerina aims to get local students engaged and excited about the history of early money with her research into the Smart’s coinage collection, and is looking forward to a career in the art world, whether that be at museums, auction houses, or galleries.

Smart Scholars is an initiative of the Smart Museum of Art’s Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry made possible in part by generous funding from the Smart Family Foundation of New York. Additional support has been provided by the University of Chicago’s College Center for Research & Fellowships (CCRF).