The exhibition “World of Numismatics” by Slađana Spasić, senior curator of the National Museum Kraljevo, was opened in the Gallery of the National Museum Kraljevo, on Thursday, June 22nd, 2023, starting at 7 p.m. The audience was greeted by Tatjana Mihailović, museum advisor of the National Museum Kraljevo. She referred to the concept of the exhibition, which includes over 1,200 exhibits of a broad chronological framework, from the 5th century BC until the 70s of the 20th century. This large cross-section through the Numismatic Collection includes coins from antiquity, namely Greek, Celtic, coins of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, through coins of several medieval states, i.e. Byzantine, Serbian, Hungarian, Ottoman medieval coins, coins of the Republic of Venice and Dubrovnik, to European coins from the 14th until the 18th century.
The most numerous are coins from the 19th to the end of the 20th century, so there are three large groups of exhibits for this period. The first and for us the most important group consists of the money of our modern countries: the money of the Principality and Kingdom of Serbia, Principality and Kingdom of Montenegro; Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918–1941), Serbia under occupation (1941–1944) and Yugoslavia (DFY, FPRY and SFRY), as well as the former Yugoslav republics of Slovenia and Croatia. The second group includes the money of a number of European countries such as: Germany, Britain, France, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Czechoslovakia and Poland; then the Yugoslav neighbours of Italy, Austria, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania. The third group consists of the money of countries from the African, Asian and American continents, such as Ethiopia, Kenya, India, Mexico and the United States.
The money is one of the first museum collections that began to be collected since the founding of the National Museum Kraljevo in what was then Rankovićevo, during the time of Professor Milorad S. Jović, founder and director during the first decade of the institution’s existence. The author gave a special overview of this period in the development of the Museum and through the works of artists Ljubomir Ivanović, Vanđel Badulij, Vladislav Maržik, Nikola Graovac and Živorad Nastasijević, which are also among the oldest exhibits that reached the museum, as an impulse of the first stage of professional collecting in Kraljevo. On the other hand, they also reflect the specific atmosphere in which the inheritance process began, where the works themselves record the architectural heritage of Kraljevo and other cities.
In a chronological sense, the exhibited numismatic material covers the period from the 5th century BC until the beginning of the seventies of the last century. The exhibits were partly acquired through purchases and gifts, while a significant part arrived in the Numismatic Collection through archaeological excavations carried out by the National Museum Kraljevo, as well as the Republic and Royal Institutes for the Protection of Cultural Monuments and other institutions.