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Stephen Sack is an acclaimed Brussels-based American artist whose work investigates money's poetic and philosophical beauty and the importance of the magical connection between 'worthless' objects and imagination. Lost and found, worn and corroded, coins are treasured as mirrors of our collective stories and reflections of our unconscious memory. With a career spanning over 40 years, Sack has held residencies and presented his coin-inspired exhibitions in major European and North American museums, galleries, and banks, among which The Museum Fine Arts, Brussels; The Chase Manhattan Bank, NYC; The British Museum, London; The Kestner Museum, Hannover; The Art and History Museum, Brussels; The Rijksmuseum, Leiden; and The National Bank of Belgium. Sack's art is an archaeological fantasy that explores ancient Greek, Roman, and Chinese money, religious medals, Euro coins, and proto-money from Africa and the Black Sea region on the conceptual axes of time, traces, and the duality of memory and abstraction.
Eurydice Georganteli is Lecturer on Numismatics and Late Antique and Byzantine Art at the Department of History of Art + Architecture. Prior to her current appointment she was the Keeper of Coins at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts and Lecturer on Numismatics at the University of Birmingham, UK (2000-2016), and Marie Curie Senior Research Fellow in Cultural Heritage at the European Commission for Research and Innovation (2013-2016). Her exhibitions, teaching, and publications focus on late antique and medieval art, numismatics, archaeology, cultural heritage, and digital storytelling. Her course HAA 73: Money Matters has been the recipient of six Derek Bok Center Awards for Teaching Excellence and the 2022 Elson Family Arts Initiative Fund.
The Alchemy of Money inaugurates Stephen Sack's week-long artist residency at Harvard University. In his workshops, Lost Worlds: Pontos Euxeinos, Stephen Sack invites Harvard students to interpret through theirphotographic lens numismatic treasures from the Black Sea in the collections of the Harvard Art Museums anddiscover a region of great ecological and cultural significance, currently at risk.
The Alchemy of Money and Lost Worlds: Pontos Euxeinos are co-sponsored by the Elson Family Arts Initiative Fund, the Department of History of Art + Architecture, the Harvard Art Museums, the Learning Lab of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, and the Committee on Medieval Studies
