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 8607
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

Sir Aurel Stein in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Acting as the UK director of an international project to catalogue the collections of Sir Aurel Stein in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (second publication due 2007)

Dunhuang textiles in the UK
Co-editing the publication Dunhuang Textiles in the UK (Donghua University Press, due 2007)

Editing the publication The Music of Ink: Chinese Arts Ancient and Modern (Saffron Books, due 2007)

Catalogue of Chairman Mao badges
Working on a catalogue of Chairman Mao badges and an exhibition on the same subject (both due 2008)

Working towards the publication of a catalogue of the Japanese coin collection at the British Museum (due 2008)

Previous British Museum projects

Co-organised an international conference entitled ‘A Hundred Years of Dunhuang, 1907-2007’, to be held at the British Museum, British Library and British Academy, London, 17-19 May 2007

Helen Wang has organised several study days on Sir Aurel Stein and the Silk Road. In June 2005, she organised the one-day event ‘The Music of Ink: Chinese Arts Ancient and Modern’ at the British Museum, bringing together six artists: Yang Lian and Romesh Gunesekera (literary artists); Denis Brown and Qu Lei Lei (visual artists); Zeng Laide and Rohan de Saram (performing artists). A publication of this event is due in 2007.

External fellowships/ honorary positions/ membership of professional bodies

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Publications

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

H. Wang, Metallurgical Analysis of Chinese Coins at the British Museum, with M. Cowell, J. Cribb. and S. Bowman (eds.) (London: 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)

H. Wang (ed.), Handbook to the Stein Collections in the UK(London: British Museum Occasional Paper 129, 1999)