The
Eric P. Newman Graduate Summer Seminar in Numismatics was first offered
in 1952; however, its origins date back almost two decades earlier,
when the Society first began its efforts to educate students in the
study of numismatics. At that time, in the mid-1930's, this effort
was limited to having the Society's Curator conduct lectures at local
New York City schools and other private schools across the country.
By the mid 1940's the Society had established its first scholarship:
the Edward T. Newell Fellowship. The purpose of this program was
to enable one student each year to study the tremendous collection of
coins that Newell bequeathed to the Society after his untimely death
in 1941.
It
was apparent by the early 1950's, however, that the Newell Scholarship
program was not meetings its original goals; students were spending
much of their time in routine tasks administering the collection, rather
than studying it for scholarly purposes. With this in mind, the
Society proposed in 1951 to establish a "summer workshop"
for graduate students, in which students could familiarize themselves
with a particular area of study, meet visiting scholars and, finally,
develop a paper using numismatics in research. The first such
seminar was offered the following summer in 1952, with thirteen students
attending. A $500 stipend was provided.
When
reflecting upon the success of that first seminar, Dr. Louis C. West,
ANS President (1949-59), noted that:
"[t]hese
students and their successors help to insure the continuing usefulness
of the efforts of those collectors whose former possessions are
now in our vaults or on our shelves.... We are not now, and
I hope that we never shall be, merely a storehouse for the preservation
of inanimate objects. Rather, we are striving to have our
possessions and facilities used for serious study, for the increase
of knowledge and particularly for the stimulation and encouragement
of real scholarship that is equipped to interpret fully the coinages
of the past."
The
Graduate Summer Seminar has been held every year since 1952, with the
exception of 1973, when the ANS was co-sponsoring the International
Numismatic Congress, and 2000, when the Society's efforts were focused
on its relocation to its new headquarters in downtown Manhattan.
