Defaced money with images of Harry and Meghan, Donald Trump and Tony Blair goes on show in Cambridge

Serous by JSG Boggs is installed and inspected by technicians during the preview of the Fitzwilliam Museum's Defaced! Money, Conflict, Protest exhibition, in Cambridge. The exhibition of money that has been defaced as “cries of anger” opens on Tuesday and is the first major exhibition to display money used as a public canvas for political and social rebellion throughout 250 years of history. Picture date: Friday October 7, 2022. Credit: PA
One of the works, Serous by JSG Boggs, being installed at the Fitzwilliam Credit: PA

An exhibition of defaced money - including a banknote featuring the Duke and Duchess of Sussex - is set to go on public display.

Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum will host the exhibition called Defaced! Money, Conflict, Protest from Tuesday, showing cash which has been “mutilated as cries of anger, injustice or despair”.

It has been billed by the museum as the “first major exhibition to present a world history of protest through currencies that have been mutilated as cries of anger, injustice or despair from the last 250 years”.

Harry and Meghan appear in a 2019 work by Boo Whorlow called Harry of England/Ten Megs, a reworking of Banksy’s Di-Faced Tenner which featured Diana, Princess of Wales.

In the work, the duke replaces the Queen and Meghan appears on the reverse with the message “Trust No Press”.

Harry of England/Ten Megs by Boo Whorlow being displayed at the preview of the exhibition. Credit: PA

Other pieces include a fake 20 US dollar bill with slavery abolitionist Harriet Tubman on it, and a coin commemorating the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, when 15 people were killed at a protest meeting in Manchester as the working class fought for political representation.

Artist Sean Kushner created a satire featuring Donald Trump on a colourful one dollar banknote saying “Maybe bae will buy me a wall”, with a smaller illustration of Russian President Vladimir Putin next to him, hinting at the alleged links between the two.

Two defaced banknotes mocking Donald Trump and Tony Blair will form part of the exhibition. Credit: PA

The Fitzwilliam Museum said: “Money is the perfect medium to highlight issues of wealth distribution, including the chasm between those at the top and the bottom, and the effects on those living in poverty.

“It has been used by artists to draw attention to the links between government policy and the financial and banking systems.

“Against the backdrop of our current cost-of-living crisis, times of inflation, spiralling costs and debt, the exhibition’s themes in which currency has been, and continues to be, created and defaced in protest remain urgently relevant.”

The exhibition will run from 11 October to 8 January and admission will be free.

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