Museums saturate the public with a look at one or more parts of our history. A good museum provides that experience with an unflinching gaze at the positives and negatives of its chosen facet. This is usually a difficult task, particularly when its topic is ever changing and unpredictable.

The Museum of American Finance, opened in January, has tackled the complex, often confusing, personality of money and capitalism in the United States. Located only a block away from the New York Stock Exchange, it is a tribute to New York City as the capital of finance throughout the world.

It was founded by John Herzog, chairman of a trading firm that is now part of Merrill Lynch, in 1987 after the market crashed. Originally housed in a smaller location at the United States Customs House, titled then the Museum of American Financial History, it has stretched its legs into a 30,000 foot location in the former Bank of New York building. Herzog developed the museum to chronicle our financial history with a clear depiction of its ups and downs.

The museum now has an auditorium, a library, and 10,000 square feet of exhibits. Affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, it highlights growing pains and working systems of both the capitalist accomplishments and exhausting failures. Touch screen monitors play interviews with successful entrepreneurs, there are displays of various companies, you can learn about the history of bank robbing, and view a collection of almost $6 million in rare coins in a room devoted to the progression of American money. See incredible financially historical objects like early adding machines, details of the 1929 market crash, a 1720 stock certificate for the South Sea Company signed by Isaac Newton, and a check signed by John D. Rockefeller.

With the market uncertain and the dollar dropping in value, money has made its point to be very flexible. Hopefully a look at The Museum of American Finance will educate us for the future while instilling reverence for the past.