On October 20, 1996, the ANS participated in the fourth annual festival of "Uptown Treasures." From 11:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. eight cultural institutions--the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Numismatic Society, the Church of the Intercession, the Cloisters, Dyckman Farmhouse Museum, the Hispanic Society of America, Morris-Jumel Mansion, and Yeshiva University Museum--opened their treasures for visitors and residents in northern Manhattan. Various programs took place that day, including concerts, performances, special exhibitions, and gallery talks. Free buses connected the institutions and there were even stops on Central Park West at 61st Street for downtown New Yorkers. Local restaurants offered luncheon specials to festival participants.

At Audubon Terrace visitors were invited to tour the ANS exhibit "The World of Coins." This year Curatorial Assistant Elena Stolyarik welcomed the ANS's guests. Her helpers, members of the ANS, Henry Bergos and Oliver D. Hoover, served as volunteers and helped to establish a friendly atmosphere at the Society for visitations. Professor Bronwyn Richards came with the group of students from Boricua College and they asked a lot of questions about economical aspects of numismatic research. Visitors, age 10 and up, were given the opportunity to strike a copy of an ancient Greek or Roman coin. Over 200 people (family groups, foreign tourists, community residents of all ages and nationalities) enjoyed the ANS gallery displays and many found for the first time a new cultural resource. They realized that the history of coins and the relationship of coins to art, geography, history, and other subjects can be a fascinating area of discovery for people of all ages.

Jen has turned out to be an extremely knowledgeable expert on the ancient and medieval cash coinage of China. The Society has one of the world's largest collections of Chinese coins, some 40,000 in all. The main core of the collection is well arranged and labeled, but over the years many accessions have not been integrated. Jen has taken it as his task to bring our scattered material together and put it all into order according to the latest publications.

So far he has arranged our coins of the Northern and Southern Song, our wu zhu and ban liang coins, and most of the issues of the dynasties of the first millennium A.D. Working two days a week, he has so far prepared about 70 trays, with at least 7,000 coins. He has also identified the many "coin trees" in our collection, which are cash coins still attached to the casting sprue. Nearly all of these are from the Reilly donation of 1937, made up mostly of the Ramsden collection. Some of these are quite rare and will be the subject of articles by Jen. One tree has turned out to be Japanese, a very rare phenomenon.

Mr. Jen was recently appointed to the Society's Committee on East Asian Coins.

The International Numismatic Commission is proposing to offer 30-40 grants to support attendance at the International Numismatic Congress in Berlin, September 8-12, 1996. Assistance will be given to support travel, registration, and accommodation.

Application copies may be obtained from William E. Metcalf, The American Numismatic Society, Broadway at 155th Street, New York, NY, 10032 USA. Applications must be received by February 1, 1997, and grants will be announced by March 1.