Lanan Nguyen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Financial industry heavyweights gathered in New York last week to raise funds for a finance museum that has lost its iconic Wall Street address.
At the Museum of American Finance’s (NASDAQ:) gala, billionaire Ken Griffin greeted attendees on huge video screens in Manhattan’s Art Deco-style Ziegfeld Ballroom. Mark Carney, Chairman of Brookfield Asset Management (TSX:) and former Governor of the Bank of England, paid tribute to former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Richard Clarida. JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:) and Wells Fargo bought the tables.
“The philosopher Santayana said: Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it,” Howard Marks, the billionaire co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management, told Reuters before receiving the award. “This is equally true in the investment business: those who don’t know the story are doomed to lose money and/or miss opportunities.”
455 participants raised $1.5 million for the museum. However, his collection, which includes bonds signed by George Washington, ticker tape from the 1929 stock market crash and early examples of American currency, languishes in a temporary storage facility in Georgia after several years in the Queens borough of New York.
At the gala, guests dined on burrata and braised beef ribs. They whispered in gratitude as the pledge for the Louisiana Purchase, which was twice the size of the United States, was projected on huge screens. The mention of President Ronald Reagan drew applause.
Carney shared a lesson he learned while working at Goldman Sachs.
“If someone in our industry explains something to you… and the explanation doesn’t make sense to you, ask them to repeat it, and if it still doesn’t make sense, walk away,” he said. “When feigned knowledge masks real ignorance, it leads to panic.”
Clarida, who works as a professor at Columbia University and consults for asset manager PIMCO, expressed pride in the Fed’s response to the pandemic when receiving the award.
“In the spring of that year, the Fed acted decisively and expansively to prevent what could well have become an economic depression and financial crisis,” he said. “The Fed’s swift and creative response to the collapse of the pandemic represents the Fed at its best.”
Like many businesses, the finance museum has suffered during the Covid-19 pandemic, facing other setbacks.
His previous home at 48 Wall Street was itself a piece of financial history: it served as the original headquarters of the Bank of New York, founded by Alexander Hamilton. The museum opened in 2008, on the eve of the global financial crisis.
His objects and documents have come a long way since then. They were displaced in 2018 when a pipe burst damaged three floors of the museum, including its large exhibition hall. Last summer, the collection was loaded onto a tractor trailer and transported from Queens to the Georgia Archives.
“We have not lost sight of the value of a physical location to our museum,” Finance Museum President and CEO David Cowan told attendees. “We are negotiating for discounted or donated space, but it is not too late – if you want to host this incredible museum, come and talk to us.”
The museum still publishes a magazine, hosts virtual lectures and organizes events held in other spaces. There is a traveling exhibition of eight display cases that can be rented out to generate income.
While it awaits a permanent home, the museum has digitized 500 boxes containing 300,000 pages, and 835 of its items have also been processed by archivists.
Lina Lin, a Yale freshman who received a scholarship from the museum, had never seen the exhibits in person. Her interest in economics began after she took a virtual personal finance course at a museum in high school.
“My most surprising finding was the number of people who lack access to financial education,” Lin said. “I would prefer a physical location just because it’s more centralized…it’s more like a gathering place.”