New Capitol exhibit displays ‘Unclaimed Treasures’

New Capitol exhibit displays ‘Unclaimed Treasures’

Highlights the Work of the Arkansas Auditor of State

chris.powell@sos.arkansas.gov

LITTLE ROCK — The Auditor of State is one of the seven constitutional officers of Arkansas’s state government. The post was created in the Constitution of 1836 and acts as the State’s general accountant, keeping track of fund and appropriation balances of all state agencies and writing warrants or checks in payment of the liabilities of the State, including paychecks of state employees.

The Auditor also carries out other responsibilities; the best-known of these is managing the state’s Unclaimed Property program.

“Accountable for Treasures,” the Capitol’s autumn exhibit, affords visitors a rare look at a rich sample of items which have been “left behind.”

Unclaimed property is any financial asset, held for a person or entity that cannot be found. It may consist of bank account balances, uncollected wages, securities, refunds or checks of many kinds, but safe deposit box contents are the most varied and most evocative. These lock boxes may contain money but often, more personal items are left behind, including personal papers, awards and decorations, collections with high intrinsic value (such as rare coins or stamps) and others with value mainly to the men or women whose obsessions they reflected.

“Accountable for Treasures” features an assortment of items removed from safe deposit boxes from across Arkansas and sent to the Auditor’s office in hope that owners or their heirs will claim them. Highlights include extensive coin collections, silver ingots, military medals, family photographs and letters, jewelry and souvenir trinkets. One collection consists exclusively of Beanie Babies plush toys, another encompasses watches, belt buckles, ID bracelets, books, numerous men’s rings and a bottle of vintage champagne while yet another combines Beatles LPs with VHS copies of films featuring Sean Connery as James Bond. A pair of police service revolvers, once the property of a Pine Bluff patrolman, are displayed near an accumulation of pocket knives both pristine and well-used and a silver trinket box containing a gold teddy-bear ring.

The exhibit also features a rare relic of the office’s history: a letter book preserving the official correspondence of State Auditors beginning in 1836 and continuing into the 1870s. The letter book is featured through the courtesy of the Arkansas State Archives, which acquired the book on Arkansas’s 180th birthday, June 15, 2016.

From Chris Powell