The American Numismatic Society (ANS) is pleased to announce the Collier Prize in Ancient Numismatics, given in memory of the late Professor James M. Collier. The Collier Prize in Ancient Numismatics is a substantial monetary prize that will be awarded biennially to the best single- or multi-authored book, catalog, or online digital work in the field of ancient numismatics (650 BCE–300 CE).
A jury of five senior numismatists, including a senior ANS curator, will be appointed biennially by the President of the American Numismatic Society to select the recipients. The Collier Prize will be offered for the first time in 2021 and the winner(s) will receive prize money of $20,000 USD, to be split equally in the event of a multi-authored work. For the initial prize, eligible publications will be limited to those works published in 2019 or 2020. The jury will announce its selection in late 2021.
Details for the Collier Prize can be found on the ANS’s website at numismatics.org/collier.
The Collier Prize honors the life of Professor James M. Collier. Professor Collier was born in Bellingham, Washington, and completed his PhD in Art History at the University of Michigan in 1975. He served as a tenured professor and department chair in the Art History Department at Auburn University (Auburn, Alabama). Over the course of his academic career, he lectured widely and published on the Italian Renaissance and Early Netherlandish perspective, which was the subject of his doctoral dissertation.
In addition to his scholarship, Professor Collier actively pursued other interests. He traveled widely and met his wife Carole Anne in the Sacristy of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy. In total, he visited 84 countries–including in 2012 when he sailed with a crew of three on a 50-foot sailboat from South Africa to Brazil. In 1990, Professor Collier and Carole Anne moved to the Netherlands, where he was a self-sufficient artist until the end of his life. His paintings cover a range of topics, including portraits, dogs, views of Amsterdam, Italian architecture, ships, and fantasies, many of which can be found on the website jimcollier.nl.
Collecting ancient coins was the foundation of his broad fascination with art, history, and culture. His collection of almost 1,000 Greek and Roman coins gave him immense pleasure, continually inspiring him by their beauty and depictions of famous monuments and portraits of Hellenistic and Roman rulers. A complete profile of Professor Collier will be included in the Spring issue of the ANS Magazine.
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The American Numismatic Society (ANS), organized in 1858 and incorporated in 1865 in New York State, operates as a research museum under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and is recognized as a publicly supported organization under section 170(b)(1)(A)(vi) as confirmed on November 1, 1970.
