Canada’s Currency Museum has closed for the next three years, but will reopen under a new name and expanded mandate, with nearly twice the floor space.
The museum moved out of its home in the Bank of Canada’s head office on Wellington Street over the summer because of major renovations, set to last until 2016.
By then, calling it the Currency Museum will be an understatement, says museum director Ken Ross. This is because the museum will use its expanded floor space to broaden its mandate from presenting Canada’s national currency collection of historic coins and bank notes, to sharing the full history of the Bank of Canada, says Ross.
He says the museum will present stories and histories of the bank’s work in funds management, monetary policy and Canada’s financial system, along with its ever growing currency collection.
Ross says the museum will announce a new name to reflect these changes, but says the staff at the Currency Museum have yet to settle on the name.
The renovations are part of an estimated $460-million project currently underway to modernize the bank’s Wellington Street head office, says spokesman Alexandre Deslongchamps.
In the meantime, the museum will continue to share stories from Canada’s national bank through a series of travelling exhibits, “which I am really pleased to see that we are doing,” says Ross. “Because even when the museum is up and running, many Canadians can’t get to see it because they don’t live here or can’t come here.”
Ross says the museum will produce roughly one new travelling exhibit to tour Canada each year.
The first, an interactive exhibit that explores the science behind note-based currency, has already opened at the Canada Science and Technology Museum off St. Laurent Boulevard. It will be on display there until March 2014. The exhibit called “In the Money” is set to travel as far as British Columbia in the coming year.
Luc Fournier, director general of the science museum, says visitors so far have enjoyed how the exhibit covers the evolution of printed currency from the invention of paper money in China to modern polymer bank notes.
“The fact that it incorporates the new polymer bill that’s out right now makes it all the more top of mind for folks who are getting these new $20 bills shot out at them through their ATM machines,”says Fournier.
The current head office building opened in 1979. It is highlighted by two glass towers and was designed by Arthur Erickson, the Canadian architect who built landmarks including Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto.
Deslongchamps says the renovations will preserve the building’s glass towers, but that the core systems within those towers need to be updated.
About 1,200 employees work at the bank’s head office. Since July, most of that staff has moved from Wellington Street to a rented office space on Laurier Avenue, says Deslongchamps.
“This is a logistical challenge and Bank employees look forward to completing this part of the project without any disruption of the bank’s functions,” says Deslongchamps.
They are also working on an expanded online museum.