A Letter from some Huntington Medallists

We are members of the American Numismatic Society mostly for thirty years or more, and we are also numismatists who have received the honour of the Huntington Medal, one of the most prestigious in our discipline. Since last autumn we have witnessed with anguish and even despair the extremely grave crisis which is leading the Society towards ruin.

The ANS was the leading and the only institution of this level in the New World, an institution famous throughout the world for the scale of its collections and its library, for its publications, and for the international reputation of its curators. It was alone in training young researchers, the numismatists, archaeologists and historians of the future, through the Summer Seminar, created more than 40 years ago, an initiative without any equivalent elsewhere. It was greatly to the credit of a community of benefactors and of the American members, supported by their European friends, to have founded and developed an institution which rivalled the greatest coin collections or museums of the world - the British Museum, the Cabinet des Médailles at Paris, and others. As in many of our societies, e.g. the Royal Numismatic Society, the French Society, the Italian, the Swiss, and many other societies, amateurs and experts, qualified and paid curators and well-wishers have collaborated with mutual respect.

How was it possible to destroy in a few months such an achievement. We entirely endorse the open letter of 24 December 1999 addressed to you by D.M. Metcalf (one of us), of which a copy is attached. You have taken no account of his objections, and lo and behold, the ANS is now drained of its life-blood, more or less, since four of the six curators have left. Having exchanged such a wealth of scholarly experience for a few square metres of floor space supposedly in a better location (how will it look in 20 years?) and for museum activities which are secondary and dependent on the scholarship, we see clearly that you have abandoned the substance in order to seize the shadow - against all reason.

Perhaps there is still time to prevent this debacle? We dare to hope against hope and we beg you, just before another meeting of your Council, to reconsider this calamitous policy.

Nous sommes membres pour la plupart de l'American Numismatic Society depuis trente ans ou plus, nous sommes aussi des numismates ayant reçu comme un honneur la distinction de la Huntington Medal, l'une des plus prestigieuses décernées dans notre discipline. Depuis l'automne dernier nous assistons avec angoisse et même avec désespoir à la crise extrêmement grave qui mène la Société vers la ruine.

L'ANS était la première et la seule institution de ce niveau dans le Nouveau monde, une institution célèbre dans le monde entier pour l'ampleur de ses collections et de sa bibliothèque, ses publications et la réputation internationale de ses conservateurs. Elle était la seule à former des jeunes chercheurs, futurs numismates, archéologues ou historiens, dans le Summer Seminar instauré il y a quarante ans, une initiative sans équivalent ailleurs. C'était tout le mérite de la communauté des donateurs et de ses membres américains, soutenus par leurs amis européens, que d'avoir fondé puis entretenu et développé une fondation qui rivalisait avec les plus grandes collections ou musées du monde (le British Museum, le Cabinet des Médailles à Paris et quelques autres). Comme dans beaucoup de nos sociétés, la Royal Numismatic Society, les Sociétés française, italienne ou suisse de numismatique et bien d'autres, amateurs et experts, conservateurs qualifiés et rémunérés et bénévoles collaboraient dans un respect mutuel.

Comment est-il possible d'avoir détruit en quelques mois une telle réalisation? Nous souscrivons entièrement à la lettre ouverte que vous a adressée le 24 décembre 1999, D.M. Metcalf, l'un d'entre nous (copie jointe). Vous n'avez pas tenu compte de ses objurgations et voici l'ANS privée de son sang ou quasiment puisque quatre conservateurs sur six l'ont quittée. Avoir échangé une matière grise si précieuse et si longue à former pour des mètres carrés soi-disant mieux placés (qu'en sera-t-il dans vingt ans?) et des activités de musée bien aléatoires, nous sommes bien placés pour le savoir, c'est avoir lâché la proie pour l'ombre, pratiquant une fuite en avant défiant toute rationalité.

Peut-être est-il encore temps d'empêcher cette débacle. Nous osons l'espérer contre toute espérance et vous adjurons, à la veille d'une nouvelle réunion de votre Conseil, de reconsidérer cette politique désastreuse.

Veuillez agréer, Monsieur le Président, l'expression de nos sentiments distingués

I have been an Associate member of the American Numismatic Society since 1961 and a Corresponding Member since 1989, with pride and pleasure until March 1999. The events that have unfolded during 1999 have, as I see it, brought the Society to the very brink of long-term ruin. I understand that three members of Council have resigned over policy.

There are two sets of problems which I wish to address, namely the way in which the Society's curatorial staff has been treated, and the health of the institution. First, the curators. The decision to reduce the curatorial staff to two and a half as a financial economy, with a 45-day deadline to accept voluntarily the termination package offered, or risk being forced to accept worse, may be legal, but it is a callous style of personnel management when the individuals concerned have given many years of devoted service to the Society, and have little or no chance of finding other employment. Insufficient effort was made by Council to find ways of saving these jobs. The members of the Society at large were not consulted before something approaching a fait accompli was put in place. Moreover, by reserving the right to accept or reject individual's acceptances of the voluntary termination package offered, should more persons opt to go than the strategy requires, Council are acting in disregard of natural justice, and in an inhumane way. Members of Council are now, apparently, forbidden to discuss the problems with the curatorial staff, for legal reasons. This is hard-faced, finance-driven management, which seems quite unsuitable on the part of persons acting as trustees of an educational charity. Council have moral obligations towards long-serving and distinguished curators, who are the backbone of the Society, which go well beyond their minimum legal obligations.

The writing has been on the wall as regards the Society's financial health for some years, and it is now clear just how imprudent it was to buy the William Street building when only $2 million - your own generous donation, sir - was up-front. With a persistent operating deficit, and a need to raid the endowment fund to pay most of the purchase price of the William Street premises, Council would seem to have gambled on their ability to replenish the endowment by fund-raising after the event (usually a tricky option) and thus to have gambled with the Society's future health in a way that, in the UK, would be judged incompatible with trustee status, and would deservedly attract the adverse attention of the Charity Commissioners.

That is the way I see it, just on the finances. The situation as a whole is far worse. As of December 1999, on present plans, it has ceased to be possible to imagine that the William Street building is the precondition for a brighter and better future for the Society. The institution for which a brighter future is being sought will in a couple of weeks no longer exist as we have known it, because the curators will have been fired, in order to help pay for the better premises. The resultant financial savings are insufficient to bridge the gap but the figures are immaterial because whatever they were, this solution is a total disaster. This is cutting off the neck of the goose that lays the golden eggs, so that it will eat less and therefore be cheaper to keep. In other words, William Street has suddenly turned into a fool's solution to the Society's problems. The strategy on which Council has gambled involves (in their judgement) slashing the curatorial staff. The ANS stands on the brink of being reduced from a world-class learned institution with an honoured place in the intellectual life of the United States as well as a high international reputation, to become almost overnight a second-class learned institution - plus a small part of the entertainment industry, catering mainly to people with a superficial interest in coins.

The strategy of attracting large benefactions through having better premises has failed, because it has become necessary in following it through, to wreck the Society. Protestations to the contrary are easily made, but less easily believed. Assurances that the Society will return to something like its former glory in two or three years are laughable. Council have destroyed the morale of the staff. Any who are allowed, or forced, to remain will be secretly ashamed, embittered, and faint-hearted in their service of the Society. They will be looking over their shoulders for fear that the axe will fall again. The Society's programmes of publication, we are told, will continue to be as ambitious and as distinguished as before; but the editor has been fired. The photographer has left. For most members the publications are the main benefit of membership. The Society's most distinguished outreach, namely the Summer Seminar, cannot in future be run by a skeleton staff, trying to guide and inspire the students, yet with no expert knowledge in most of the fields being research by the students. To offer assurances that it can be run as before is cloud-cukoo-land.

The ANS, as a learned Society, is a curious hybrid comprising a research institute, a coin collection (both of these world-class), and a membership composed of all sorts of persons interested in numismatics. Running a museum-type display is a fourth, marginal activity: some of us have discovered, through a lifetime's involvement in creating museum displays, that coins do not lend themselves well to this form of public entertainment. Even a later-day Hoving would find it difficult to make the pennies jingle.

The members of the Society meet in a forum of which the social dynamics are quite subtle. The paid curatorial staff are often among the greatest living experts in their field, whereas Council and its committees tend to be staffed by amateur numismatists - in the best sense of that phrase. The mingling and co-operation of staff and fellows in the forum of the Society's rich range of activities therefore operates, and needs to operate, on a basis of tact, friendliness, and good-will on both sides. Distinguished curators give of themselves in many ways, far beyond what could be expected from their contracts. They live their professional lives in a spirit of everyday generosity to other numismatists, to students, and to members of the public. I wonder, sir, whether you have seen the film or read the book Howards End with its motto, 'Only connect'?

The only hope of pulling back from the brink lies in recognizing and admitting, painful though it will be, that the 45-day dealine on redundancy was a disastrous error of judgement and that it must be extended until, hopefully, a better way can be found. Even if it means raiding the endowment meanwhile, until the new building attracts the greater benefacions which were one of the reasons for the strategy of moving house. Without its distinguished highly motivated curators, the ANS becomes a mere cypher.

Council may feel that they have done well, and generously, by pledging the funds for the refurbishment of William Street. They have done generously - very generously. But wisely? Sensibly, even? What they have done is about as sensible as getting rid of one's wife in order to be able to afford a better home.

The moment has probably come to review the governance of the Society, and to seek stability by placing it to some extent under the sponsorship of trustees appointed by some leading universities, etc. But that can wait until after January 15th. I am hoping that the Fellows and Associates, on the 15th January, will join with me in pressing wiser counsels upon those in whose hands the fate of the ANS lies.