Guernsey Press

Exhibition of defaced money to include Harry and Meghan banknotes

Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum will host the exhibition.

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An exhibition of defaced money “mutilated as cries of anger, injustice or despair” is to go on display, including a banknote featuring the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum will host the exhibition called Defaced! Money, Conflict, Protest from Tuesday.

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”.

Defaced! Money, Conflict, Protest exhibition – Cambridge
Four Horsemen by Wefail which features Theresa May, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson and Margaret Thatcher (Joe Giddens/PA)

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.

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.

Defaced! Money, Conflict, Protest exhibition – Cambridge
Imagined Value by JSG Boggs (Joe Giddens/PA)

“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 October 11 to January 8 and admission will be free.

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