The American Numismatic Society (ANS) is pleased to announce the naming of the curatorial position in American numismatics as the Resolute Americana Chair of American Numismatics. Thanks to a generous donation by ANS Life Fellow Robert L. Rodriguez, a longtime researcher and collector of Colonial and early United States coinage, the endowment to support this curatorship has now grown substantially.
The chair’s new name honors one of Mr. Rodriguez’s outstanding achievements, the assemblage of his Resolute Americana Collection, which includes coins and medals ranging from the beginning of the colonial period in the Americas to the earliest days of the United States Mint. Notable among them are some of the finest examples of Massachusetts silver coinage from 1652, the most complete collection of Continental dollars, and among the finest sets of 1792 Mint Pattern coinage ever assembled.
Mr. Rodriguez chose the name “Resolute” for several reasons, among them his belief that the word aptly describes his own personal nature. He noted that the name also evokes HMS Resolute, a British ship that has its own unique ties to American history.
The Resolute Americana Chair of American Numismatics supports the work of the curator overseeing the Society’s collection of North American and Latin American coins, tokens, and paper currency, as well as portions of the collection of medals. With nearly 200,000 objects dating from the early 16th century to the present, the Society’s American holdings represent one of the premier collections of American-related numismatics in the world.
Assistant Curator Dr. Jesse Kraft holds this endowed chair. Dr. Kraft, who completed his Ph.D. in United States History from the University of Delaware in 2019, has become acknowledged as an expert in the field of American numismatics. He has published extensively in both the Journal of Early American Numismatics, where he currently serves on the Editorial Committee, and the ANS Magazine; his forthcoming monograph, Colonial Change: The Circulation and Rejection of Foreign Coinage in the United States, ca. 1600–1900, will be published in 2023.
“We are very grateful for this contribution from Mr. Rodriguez, who has been extraordinarily generous in his support of the research and publication of American numismatics at the ANS,” said Executive Director Gilles Bransbourg. “We are pleased that this gift recognizes the quality of the collection of American numismatics here and ensures that research in this area will continue to expand and deepen.”
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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.
