Helen Wang

Curator of East Asian Money

Coins and banknotes of East Asia, seventh century BC to the present

Department: Coins and Medals

Telephone: +44 (0)20 7323 8172
Email: hwang @ thebritishmuseum.ac.uk

Helen Wang is responsible for the Museum’s collection of East Asian coins and banknotes. Her special interests include the archaeologist Sir Aurel Stein (1862-1943), his extensive collections, the Silk Road and the use of textiles as money.

She has also published other lesser known aspects of the British Museum’s East Asian money collection: for example, Chinese secret society money and membership certificates; the logistics of transporting copper for coinage in nineteenth century China; paper money design in Shanghai in the 1900s; bronze token money of Jiangsu province in the 1930s; images of Mao Zedong on Chinese money in the twentieth century.

Current British Museum projects

Editing the publication The Music of Ink: Chinese Arts Ancient and Modern (Saffron Books)

Editing a catalogue of the Japanese coin collection at the British Museum (British Museum Research Publication)

Working with specialists on the subject of textiles as money on the Silk Road.

Previous British Museum projects

Curator of the exhibition ‘Icons of Revolution: Mao Badges Then and Now’ (2008)

Co-editor of the publication Textiles from Dunhuang in UK Collections / 敦煌絲綢藝術全集：英藏娟 (Donghua University Press, Shanghai, 2007)

UK leader and co-editor of the international projects leading to the publication of Catalogue of the Collections of Sir Aurel Stein in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Budapest, 2002) and Supplement to the Catalogue of the Collections of Sir Aurel Stein in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Budapest, 2007).

Co-organiser of the international conference ‘A Hundred Years of Dunhuang, 1907-2007’ at the British Museum, British Library and British Academy (May 2007)

External fellowships/ honorary positions/ membership of professional bodies

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Publications

H. Wang, Chairman Mao Badges: Symbols and Slogans of the Cultural Revolution (British Museum Research Publication 169, 2009)

H. Wang, Money on the Silk Road: the evidence from Eastern Central Asiato c. AD 800 (London: British Museum Press, 2004)

H. Wang and J. Perkins (eds) Handbook to the Collections of Sir Aurel Stein in the UK (British Museum Research Publication 129, 2008)

H. Wang, M. Cowell, J. Cribb, S. Bowman (eds), Metallurgical Analysis of Chinese Coins at the British Museum (British Museum Research Publication 152, 2005)

H. Wang, Sir Aurel Stein. Proceedings of the British Museum Study Day 2002 (London: British Museum Occasional Paper 142, 2004)

H. Wang (ed.), Sir Aurel Stein in the Times (London: Saffron Books, 2002)