GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter two years the Cen­tral Bank’s mu­se­um has re­opened with its Jour­ney to Poly­mer Ban­knotes among the key fea­tures.

The ex­hi­bi­tion al­so high­lights through tan­gi­ble ob­jects and arte­facts, the tran­si­tion from cot­ton notes to poly­mer notes over 2014 to 2021, and the de­sign and se­cu­ri­ty el­e­ments that dis­tin­guish the new poly­mer suite.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s open­ing which co­in­cid­ed with In­ter­na­tion­al Mu­se­um Day, Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire said, “We are now in re­open­ing mode and we think we can do it safe­ly but we need your sup­port and par­tic­i­pa­tion,” adding that COVID how­ev­er, is no where over as he al­so en­cour­aged peo­ple to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

Not­ing that the past al­so re­lates to the present and cer­tain­ly the fu­ture Hi­laire said spaces such as mu­se­ums bring to­geth­er cul­ture and peo­ple.

“A mu­se­um is not re­al­ly a place of dead arte­facts. It is a place of li­aisons and what we at the Cen­tral Bank tries to do is be at the cut­ting edge; to be dy­nam­ic,” Hi­laire ex­plained.

He said the mu­se­um will not on­ly wel­come mem­bers of the pub­lic in­clud­ing stu­dents and re­tirees but al­so tourists who vis­it from the var­i­ous cruise ships.

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic the mu­se­um of­fered vir­tu­al show­ings and tours but with its re­open­ing it al­so show­cased art pieces from young, lo­cal artists, Hi­laire added.

Ac­cord­ing to its web­site, the dri­ving force be­hind the Cen­tral Bank’s Mu­se­um is its com­mit­ment to cul­ture and ed­u­ca­tion, and with this in mind, it has cre­at­ed an invit­ing, open and en­gag­ing space that al­lows vis­i­tors to dis­cov­er and learn about im­por­tant as­pects of the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic and artis­tic cul­ture and his­to­ry.

In De­cem­ber 2014, a spe­cial edi­tion gold-coloured poly­mer $50 note was com­mis­sioned to mark the 50th an­niver­sary of the Cen­tral Bank of T&T. This note was up­grad­ed with tac­tile fea­tures in 2015.

In De­cem­ber 2019, the bank in­tro­duced the $100 poly­mer note.

The full poly­mer cur­ren­cy suite was in­tro­duced over time from No­vem­ber 2020 ($5, $10 and $20) to Feb­ru­ary 2021 ($1 and $50) and since Jan­u­ary 1, 2022, on­ly the new poly­mer notes are le­gal ten­der.

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