Five-hundred ancient Greek and Roman coins from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, will be showcased in an inaugural exhibition of its new coin gallery in September.

According to the Museum, the Michael C. Ruettgers Ancient Coin Gallery will be the first-ever gallery dedicated to ancient coins at a major U.S. museum, unique in the world for its emphasis on ancient coins as works of art.

Ruettgers, the gallery's namesake, has given 14 rare and important Roman gold coins to the MFA, including an aureus with the bust of Aelius Verus from 137 C.E.

The exhibition will draw from the museum's collection of approximately 7,500 coins and will feature some of the MFA's most important Greek and Roman coins. A Demareteion dekadrachm of Syracuse with quadriga, circa 465 B.C.E., is the most famous Greek coin in the Museum's collection. A tetradrachm of Amphipolis with head of Apollo from 390-370 B.C.E. is one of the most sculptural of Greek coin types.

Also on view in the gallery will be complementary works of art to show how coin engravers used the same visual vocabulary and similar compositions as found in larger works but had to also adapt them to miniature scale and round format.

Visitors will be able to examine these and other coins on iPads placed throughout the gallery and by downloading the MFA's coin gallery app on their iPhones.

Lead curator for the exhibition is Richard A. Grossmann, consulting curator for numismatics.

The coin gallery will be open to the public in September during normal Museum hours: from 10 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday, and from 10 a.m. to 9:45 p.m. Wednesday through Friday.

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