Last week I mentioned Belgian artist Rene Magritte and how his home country honors his memory.Before the advent of the Euro as the currency in much of the EU, Belgium had him on its 500 franc note.By the way, it was recently announced that the next round of EU bank notes will feature Maria Callas, Leonardo DaVinci, Marie Curie, Beethoven, and Miguel de Cervantes.The designs will be unveiled later this year.I’m excited to see them.
The UK, which doesn’t use the Euro, also puts artists and writers on its paper money.In the past, composer Edward Elgar, novelist Jane Austen, and painter JMW Turner have been commemorated and celebrated by having their faces on various pieces of currency. What a contrast to our practice of putting just presidents and founding fathers on our money. Why just them?
In 1922, the US Treasury Department claimed that “portraits of Presidents...have a more permanent familiarity in the minds of the public than any others.” I rather doubt that, at least today. The only non-presidential faces that look out at us are Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin. In the past, lesser-known presidents have been on some of our unusual denominations.
Nobody asked me but I would like us to put artists on our bills like the British do. The United States has produced numerous musicians, for instance, who are essential enough to our culture to warrant inclusion on our money. Maybe we could leave George Washington on the one-dollar bill, but just off the top of my head I would put Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald on maybe the 10 and the 20. George and Ira Gershwin together would be perfect on, say, the five. Scott Joplin, the father of ragtime music, could be on the 50. We could put John Philip Sousa or Chuck Berry or Woody Guthrie on the 100. (Although Woody might be happier being on the five.)And think of everyone that list leaves off. I would want Miles and John Coltrane and Muddy Waters on a couple of bills. Then maybe five or ten years later we take them off and we put on painters and poets. Let’s start with William Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Walt Whitman, Jackson Pollock, Winslow Homer, and Zora Neale Hurston.
I know that part of the reason that the situation is how it is with our currency, is that we perceive the arts as less important than politics. That’s surely one of our greatest failings.