Three Stage Plan for the Museum of Money and Financial Institutions

  • The construction of a Virtual Museum Web site.
    This comprehensive Web site will contain over 90 exhibitions and a range of features, games and activities designed to promote economic literacy.
  • A traveling exhibition: Economica.
    Economica will be patterned after Mathematica the exhibition designed by Charles and Ray Eames on the World of Mathematics. Two copies of this 3500 square foot exhibition will be produced.
  • A “Bricks-and-Mortar” Museum.
    The organization of both the virtual museum and Economica will provide both the design, content and market testing experience for a a large-scale physical Museum of Money and Financial Institutions to be located at the former site of the New York Stock Exchange.

Three Stages: Status Report
This is an overall description of the three mile posts in the promotion of a museum of money and financial institutions. The eventual goal is the construction of a major museum to be located in Lower Manhattan. The ideal location for a museum associated with economic life would be the trading floor of the historically designated New York Stock Exchange after the exchange moves.

A major museum is an expensive item. In terms of the economic resources required $2-300,000,000 in cash and/or kind is required. Before such a commitment of resources is called for there are two far more modest stages, each of which yields a product, in and of itself, and provides both much of the organizational structure required for the museum and much of the "market and feasibility" testing required.