Central banks woo ‘wider audience’ with economy museums

School children trooping past glass cases of old coins at Stockholm’s Economy Museum might find one particular piece catches their attention: a 20kg slab of copper dating back to 1644.

This so-called plate money — produced when Sweden wanted to control the price of its copper exports — was so vastly impractical that it led to the development of the first European banknotes.

It is now one of the star turns of the state museum, whose exhibition was reopened by the governor of Sweden’s Riksbank, making it the latest central bank to throw its weight behind efforts to make economics and monetary policy more accessible.

Central banks have long sought to build understanding of the forces driving inflation and win support for their policies with wider programmes to promote economic literacy.

But their efforts have taken on a fresh urgency as policymakers seek to persuade the public that the pain during the cost of living crisis was a necessary evil.

As a bulletin from Australia’s Reserve Bank puts it: “Understanding of basic economic issues can influence a central bank’s ability to achieve its goals, such as by anchoring the public’s inflation expectations in line with its inflation target.”

Cecilia Von Heijne, director of Sweden’s Economy Museum, said the aim of the overhaul — a four-year project — was to “reach out to a wider audience for economic literacy”.

Mexico’s central bank led the way on educating the public when it opened its Interactive Museum of Economics in a former convent in 2006. Visitors can try their hand at keeping inflation low, or play the part of a country’s chief negotiator in international climate talks.

The Banque de France backed a similar project in Paris, where the Cité de l’Économie opened five years ago in the extravagant surroundings of the Hôtel Gaillard, built in the style of a Loire château for a 19th century banker.  

Visitors can decide how to reform France’s pension system, balance its public finances or haggle in a livestock auction — a role-playing approach that helps avoid controversy in a country where many people mistrust free markets.

Brazil’s Money Museum is also undergoing a makeover into a museum of economics. Canada’s Currency Museum was rebranded as the Bank of Canada museum in 2017 with a mission to “demystify” monetary policy. The Swiss National Bank and Bank of England have also floated refurbishment plans.

The Bundesbank’s Geldmuseum, which has had a similar revamp, has gone one step further with digitisation. Its website offers a 3D virtual tour and a virtual exhibition that allows viewers to open doors on the past and explore Germany’s painful history of hyperinflation.

In Sweden, the task was to transform “an old dusty coin cabinet” into a narrative that would engage teenagers and young adults, explaining “how the economy works through time”, said Tim Ventimiglia, a director at Ralph Appelbaum Associates, the design practice that developed the two permanent exhibitions.

When he began working on Sweden’s project, there were few international precedents to draw on, he said. Inspiration came more from ethnographic museums and science centres that have already swung heavily towards game-playing and interactive installations.

One of the exhibitions is tailored to school groups — challenging children to make choices on how to spend tax money; to compete in a piggy bank savings race; or to trace the global supply chains behind everyday products at a scanning station.

At the other, a selection of objects from the museum’s vast collection ranges from Roman hoards to tokens used to pay mill workers and second world war ration cards. Children can take a 19th century job interview or weight-lift a replica of the copper plate money.

During its closure, Von Heinje said the museum experimented with portable exhibitions sent out in Plexiglas cases to schools — helping teachers explore topical issues such as inflation by showing their students original Weimar and French revolution era banknotes, and intricate origami crafted from worthless Venezuelan currency.

For serious numismatists, more than 100,000 coins from the museum’s Viking-focused collection have been digitised. For the few coins on display, touchscreens allow visitors to zoom in on details, such as the names of Anglo-Saxon mint masters hired from overseas to make them.

For Von Heijne, an archaeologist and numismatist by training, these worn slivers of metal are still the heart of the endeavour.

“They are not that closely connected to the current day but there are some eternal questions when it comes to money: how do we value things, what is the function of money, how does it affect how we think and relate to each other? We can always address these.”