Coin petting zoo at the Lawrence University

I read an article in the October 27, 2019 E-Sylum about an annual coin petting zoo organized by the Lawrence University classics department and the Wriston Art Center Galleries in Appleton, Wisconsin. The idea fascinated me, because it was a hands-on experience with coins, and had absolutely nothing to do with blind people. When I talk to coin collectors, I often encourage them to experience coins by touch when it is possible. Traditionally we can see coins in holders or behind glass, but there is still many to be handled especially when using a proper protection of objects.

After reading about the coin petting zoo, I was curious how it came about, and I wanted to see what we can learn from this experience either for collectors in general, or if there is something that can be adopted for blind people to learn about numismatics. I contacted Adriana Brook, a professor of classics, from Lawrence University’s classic department with my questions. She responded promptly and suggested that I also contact Beth Zinsli who is the curator of this collection.

As I was researching this topic, I also came across another article from the E-Sylum, which talks about the collection and Ottilia Buerger, a Lawrence University alumna, who donated it to the University. I will not rewrite this information here, but I would recommend that you read it with this post, it is a great piece.

I originally wanted to write this post in an interview style, and I sent a few questions to Adriana and Beth. Their response was so great, if I converted it into a different format it would only lose from its value, so the following is a slightly filtered version of the emails I got in response to my questions. Beth Zinsli mostly told us about the history of the collection, and Adriana Brook gave an overview of the coin petting zoo and explained how she is using it in her classes.

Beth Zinsli:
“Students have been allowed to handle and work with the coins since they came to our campus in the early1990s. Ottilia decided to give the coins to Lawrence University because she knew we would use them in teaching, not just lock them away. Other museums were courting her for the bequest, but the idea that students would be able to study them closely really appealed to her. It’s really a wonderful moment when students realize they are holding a man-made object that is 2,000 some years old – it helps make that history real, despite the distance.

LU students started working with the coins immediately; their annotations appear in the first print edition of the coin catalogue and continue to be added to the online version.
So, while the vast majority of coins in the collection came from Ottilia Buerger, there are a few in the “Classics Collection,” 50 or so Roman Republican coins that live in our colleague’s office (and which were subjected to some experimental cleaning methods as part of a student project at some point), and a few new additions from other donors.

There have been a couple LU Honors Projects on the coins which are pretty interesting, too, they are available for download here.”

Adriana Brook:
“The first thing to clarify is that the petting zoo definitely wasn’t my idea – I became involved in this event through the efforts of the Classics Club and Carol Lawton, Lawrence’s recently retired ancient art historian who was key in getting students to work with the coins in the first place. In terms of where the name comes from, the most likely scenario is that one or more of our students affectionally and informally started calling a coin exhibition at the campus art gallery by this monicker and the title stuck. After that, allowing visitors to engage with the coins (always wearing cotton gloves) became part of the event, which remains associated with the annual Classics Week, though we occasionally have additional petting zoo events at other times through the year.

The students are usually the ones who select which coins to exhibit. Sometimes it’s coins that they’ve worked on in particular courses. Sometimes they use Lawrence’s institutional subscription to Artstor (an online database of images for educational and scholarly use) to browse the collection and pick the coins they like best. For the most recent coin petting zoo they chose an animal theme: lions for Heracles, crocodiles from Egypt, owls for Athens.

Most students are new to the coins, though some of them will have come into contact with them in my class or, more likely, in an art history class. This most recent term students did a coin-related project in a class on the art and architecture of the medieval north called Vikings to Vaultings (we don’t have any coins from that period/region but students were asked to compare images of those coins to the Greek/Roman coins in our collection); one of the students in that class, who is also studying classics, participated in the petting zoo. I believe the coins are also used in the Introduction to Art History course when students discuss imperial portraiture. There are also a handful students still around who did more in-depth research on the coins when Carol Lawton was teaching and I can think of one in particular who is very interested in numismatics and may end up doing a senior thesis involving the coins.

From my perspective as a professor there are several aspects of the ancient coin petting zoo that I consider to be particularly successful. First, it allows students to engage with the field of classics in a tangible way that’s often lacking – for good reasons – in classes that focus on the ancient past. Students read heavily edited texts that somebody else has translated or look at pictures of famous, well-preserved (often restored) artifacts of the past. When students engage with the past in this somewhat distanced way, it’s really easy to lose sight of the fact that our connection to the ancient world is often really tenuous. When students engage with the coins in 3D they have to contend with uncertainty: the coins are worn away in places; they may be cast asymmetrically, leaving partial words or images; there’s no authoritative textbook to consult to find out what the text says or what the imagery is meant to represent (or sometimes, what a given image is even supposed to be!); some of our coins even contain “typos.” Uncertainty can be an uncomfortable experience, but it offers a valuable perspective on the role that historians, archaeologists, and textual critics play in creating the body of knowledge that students come into contact with in classics courses.

Given the standard texts and artifacts that students often encounter in introductory classics courses, it can also be easy to lose sight of that fact that most of what is preserved of the ancient world represents only a small fraction of ancient society. Typically the wealthy, politically influential, and privileged are over-represented, giving us a very skewed perspective on the past. While many of the coins in our collection are high value and perpetuate that focus on the ancient 1%, the collection also includes smaller denominations that would have been used in everyday contexts by ordinary people. The students can touch coins that were touched by merchants, day labourers, traders, farmers and their families etc. opening up a broader perspective on who we need to include in our understanding of the ancient world.

Finally, I think one of the big successes of the coin petting zoo is the experience is affords the students who help to coordinate it. Often, as part of getting ready for the event, students will tour behind the scenes in the Wriston Gallery to see how the coins are stored and how they fit into Lawrence’s collections as a whole. For students who may be interested in museum studies (or who might get turned on to museum studies unexpectedly through this event), the coin petting zoo offers fantastic hands on experience that isn’t always easily accessible to undergraduates.

For all of these reasons, I use the coin collection in my Introduction to Classics course as one of the culminating assignments of the term. Students are asked to choose one of five coins all struck during the reign of the emperor Augustus and compare it to either an Athenian tetradrachm or a tetradrachm minted during the campaigns of Alexander the Great. Of course, they are required to visit the coins in person and get up close and personal with them. The assignment allows students to reflect on some of the broader trans-historical themes in the course and to apply those larger ideas to objects that haven’t already been interpreted a thousand times over across the centuries. I’ve always been really pleased with the papers I get and I think the students enjoy the chance to get out of the classroom/library and test the skills they’ve developed over the term in a hands-on way.”

The Ottilia Buerger collection can be browsed here.

The entire collection of currently 402 objects is available here.

I particularly liked the detailed description of the coins. All necessary information is available, and both sites provide a way to easily create a citation of any coin viewed.

Finally, let me mention that you can also make a donation to help this amazing endeavor to grow. Lawrence University accepts donations of artwork/objects as gifts-in-kind. They are particularly looking for objects from the medieval and renaissance periods, but will also consider other periods. Donation proposals are approved by a gallery committee before accepted.

I would like to thank Professor Beth Zinsli and Professor Adriana Brook for taking the time to answer my questions. I hope this initiative will be an inspiration to other organizations as well.