arts and design

Loadsamoney! Bank of England: 325 Years, 325 Objects – review

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By its nature, the Bank of England is a sober and slightly forbidding institution. It sets interest rates, it polices the City to make sure there is no repeat of the 2008 financial meltdown, it is responsible for supplying banknotes, and it has tons of gold stashed away in the vaults. All, for centuries past, in as unobtrusive a way as possible. Before he became governor, Mervyn King once said that he wanted decisions over the cost of borrowing to be as boring as possible.

All of which is fine if you want to get on with things with minimum fuss. It is more of a challenge if you are trying to open yourself up and put on an exhibition highlighting the Bank’s many faces down the years.

The Bank of England has always had power and influence, but arguably it has never had greater clout than it does today. Communicating better with the public is now part of the Bank’s mantra, so when it wanted to put on a show to mark its 325th birthday at the end of this month, it came up with the idea of telling the story of the past through 325 objects. It’s an ambitious endeavour that doesn’t quite come off.

Chilling artefact … the Bank’s nuclear weapon effects calculator, an exhibit from 1959, to estimate damage from a nuclear attack.



Chilling artefact … the Bank’s nuclear weapon effects calculator, an exhibit from 1959, to estimate damage from a nuclear attack. Photograph: Bank of England Museum

That’s not because the Bank lacks an interesting story to tell. It has been knee-deep in every economic and financial disaster of the past three-and-a-bit centuries, and there have been plenty, stretching all the way back to the South Sea Bubble in 1720.

Rather, it’s because the drama of financial crashes and runs on the pound is already captured by the Bank’s permanent exhibition, which surrounds and rather overwhelms the temporary show. Just by way of example, the new exhibition does not include the James Gillray cartoon from 1797 that gave the Bank its nickname of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. That has remained in its normal place.

The original plan, with a passing nod to Neil MacGregor’s History of the World in 100 Objects at the British Museum, was to have an exhibit for every year. It’s a pity that proved impossible, and instead the exhibition is arranged in conventional chronological blocks, starting with William III’s need to finance a war against France and ending with the decision by Gordon Brown in 1997 to grant the Bank freedom to set interest rates.

Weighty matter … scales for checking foreign coins from 1749.



Weighty matter … scales for checking foreign coins from 1749. Photograph: Bank of England Museum

There are plenty of banknotes on display, probably too many for anyone other than notaphilists, to be frank. Some do have an interesting history, such as the counterfeit currency that the Germans intended to drop over Britain during the second world war in Operation Bernhard, an attempt to destroy the economy through hyper-inflation.

It’s a bit of a shame, in that wartime context, that it was too late to include the latest addition to the banknote collection: a mockup of the new £50 note that will feature Alan Turing, the mathematician who helped crack the Enigma code.

That’s not to say the exhibition lacks interesting artefacts. A rudimentary encryption device and a cylindrical slide rule show how technology has revolutionised central banking in recent decades. There is an insight into the role of women, customers of the Bank from the outset, but only allowed to become clerks towards the end of the 19th century.

Lost soul … the Bank Nun, by an unknown artist, c1835. In 1812, former Bank clerk Paul Whitehead was executed for forgery. His sister, Sarah Whitehead, could not accept his death and kept coming to the Bank to look for him.



Lost soul … the Bank Nun, by an unknown artist, c1835. In 1812, former Bank clerk Paul Whitehead was executed for forgery. His sister, Sarah Whitehead, could not accept his death and kept coming to the Bank to look for him. Photograph: Bank of England Museum

The oldest exhibit, meanwhile, is a plate bearing the head of William III dating from the year the Bank was founded; the most recent is a bird feeder made from the recycled polymer now used to make bank notes. There are money boxes, cash registers, even a Guardian cartoon by Kipper Williams about quantitative easing.

Overall, though, the exhibition is mildly diverting rather than compelling. And it needs to be viewed alongside the permanent exhibition rather than as an alternative to it.

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