Bank of Canada Museum

Bank of Canada Museum
The new location of the Bank of Canada Museum (the entrance is below, on the left)
Map
Established1980
LocationOttawa, Ontario, Canada
Coordinates45°25′15″N 75°42′11″W / 45.42088°N 75.702968°W / 45.42088; -75.702968
WebsiteBank of Canada Museum

The Bank of Canada Museum (French: Musée de la Banque du Canada; since July 2017), formerly known as the Currency Museum (French: Musée de la monnaie), opened in 1980 on the ground floor of the Bank of Canada building in Ottawa, Ontario. Temporarily closed in 2013 for major building renovations, the museum reopened in a new space on July 1, 2017, in a new building, with a completely new design and concept. It is, however, connected to the main building through the Bank of Canada's underground conference centre.

The museum used to be the public face of the National Currency Collection, which contains over 100,000 currency-related artifacts from around the world. These include coins, banknotes, dies, plates, and engraving tools, bank and government ledgers, weights and scales, cash registers, wallets, numismatic medals and cards and examples of counterfeit money. This collection was on display until 2013, and currently, most of it is in storage and is not available to visitors.

As of February 2021, the museum is working on replacing these artifacts, both by putting them out, and digitizing them.[1]

The National Currency Collection also encompasses a library and archive, which contain over 8,500 books, pamphlets, catalogues and journals dating back to the Middle Ages.[2]: 19 

The Museum offers various educational programs for school groups and the public, in both English and French.[3]

  1. ^ "Permanent Exhibition". www.bankofcanadamuseum.ca. Retrieved 2021-02-24.
  2. ^ Bank of Canada. (2008). Beads to bytes : Canada's national currency collection = Si l'argent m'était conté : la collection nationale de monnaies du Canada (PDF). [Ottawa]: Bank of Canada = Banque du Canada. ISBN 978-0-9811235-0-9. OCLC 297156182.
  3. ^ "National Currency Museum". Bank of Canada. Archived from the original on 19 August 2011. Retrieved 14 July 2009.