The Museum of American Finance opens its doors in Boston
Image of the Museum of American Finance’s new home at Commonwealth Pier in Boston Harbor.
Courtesy: Museum of American Finance
Nearly a decade after leaving its former home, the Museum of American Finance is welcoming the public to its new headquarters, just in time for the nation’s 250th anniversary.
Located at Commonwealth Pier in Boston, the 5,400-square-foot museum is the Smithsonian Institution affiliate’s first permanent home since its founding. terminated the lease agreement Due to a flood at 48 Wall Street in New York in 2018.
After signing a new lease just 16 months ago, the museum was able to debut seven inaugural exhibitions. One, developed in partnership with Fidelity’s Center for Applied Technology, uses artificial intelligence to create an interactive Alexander Hamilton.
“We’re bringing it back to life,” Erich Umar, FCAT’s head of technology strategy and planning, said at a press conference at the museum ahead of its opening earlier this week. “History does not only live in the past; it also interacts with the future.”
Visitors can speak to the first U.S. treasury secretary in more than 50 languages and even ask him unique questions, such as asking him to elaborate on compound interest using a football analogy.
The “Alexander Hamilton Experience” exhibit features a multilingual Alexander Hamilton generated by artificial intelligence.
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“Advances in technology are providing opportunities we could only dream of a few years ago,” Umar told CNBC. “It allows us to scale financial education and reach more Americans where they are, regardless of geography, language or preferred learning method.”
Starting in ‘familiar’ territory
When visitors enter the museum, the first issue they will discover is the mundane: money.
The interactive exhibit, “America in Circulation,” showcases a variety of examples of the nation’s currencies, from the earliest to the present day, and showcases how they have evolved over the centuries.
“We wanted the money gallery to be the first exhibit visitors would explore because everyone is familiar with money,” said Kristin Aguilera, the museum’s deputy director. “So we’re starting with a topic that’s accessible to everyone.”
“America in Circulation” is an interactive currency exhibit featuring examples of American paper money.
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The oldest currencies on display are the pinewood shilling from 1652; The oldest paper currency in the exhibition dates back to the 18th century. Even with such a wide range of views, visitors can use touch screens to dig deeper. With a few taps, they can zoom in to see the intricate details and symbolism of a particular example.
“A lot of this paper money stemmed from major events in our history, like the Revolutionary War,” said Rahul Arora, the exhibition’s guest curator and financial historian. “Some of these notes would not have existed.”
Arora said he hopes the exhibition will lead others to truly appreciate the value of money, especially from an artistic perspective. This potential outcome couldn’t come at a better time because the federal government has already halted production of new coins, and Arora predicts that it’s only a matter of time before the dollar is phased out.
“You shop online now, all you see is the quantities,” he said. “You go on Amazon, you buy something, and you just see the amount. You don’t think about the monetary transactions that are taking place.”
From awareness to action
Bringing financial education to the masses, admission is free, ensuring anyone who wants to learn about finance can do so.
This comes at a time when existential financial anxiety is plaguing Americans. According to a Pew Research surveyIn April, 64 percent of Americans said the federal deficit was a “very big problem” for the United States. This rate increased compared to 57 percent in February 2025.
Currently, the national budget deficit for the fiscal year to date is exceeded 1.2 trillion dollars. There is a national debt exceeded 39 trillion dollars.
“We are moving away from the principles that Hamilton put into practice,” said Richard Sylla, professor emeritus of economics at NYU Stern School of Business and former president of the museum. Sylla, currently a member of the museum’s board of trustees, curated three of the exhibitions; one of which documents the founding of the US financial system.
“Financial Revolution” traces the founding of the US financial system.
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“There are a lot of negative things about the state of the country right now,” he said in an interview. “I think it’s a nice, positive reminder that no matter how bad you think things are right now, we actually have a great history of being the richest country in the world.”
Despite concerns about the fiscal path the United States is taking, Sylla is optimistic that such issues will be resolved within the next few years.
“When Hamilton took office, we were in a bigger mess than we are now because we couldn’t actually pay our debts. Now we’re just running up debt and probably heading towards default, but we were actually in default against both domestic and international creditors,” he said.
“The Future of Finance” explores the evolution of blockchain, crypto, tokenization and financial technology.
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“The museum is full of things outside of the musical [‘Hamilton’]’ said Sylla afterwards.
As visitors near the end of their journey through the museum, they enter the final exhibit, “Personal Finance.” This section hopes to tie together the themes of the previous galleries and provide visitors with a better understanding of the U.S. financial system and how tools can be developed to improve one’s financial well-being.
Former CNBC senior market correspondent Bob Pisani said the museum is not just about financial history but also financial literacy.
“Alexander Hamilton helped invent the first bank of the United States, which stabilized the financial situation of the United States and set the country on a course of innovation,” said Pisani, who is a member of the museum’s board of trustees. “Financial literacy is about understanding that kind of history, but it’s also about understanding your own personal financial situation. It’s also about setting a budget.”
He noted that an individual’s setting of a personal budget is, in essence, “very similar” to the government setting its own budget.
“The personal budget and the federal budget are not that far apart,” he said. “Financial literacy teaches people to understand how to invest. It teaches people how to save money wisely. It teaches people the value of compound interest and how to make your money work for you.”
