State Bank of Pakistan Museum & Art Gallery, Karachi

The State Bank of Pakistan Museum & Art Gallery preserves the history of money, banking, and the central bank through collections of coins, banknotes, stamps, documents, and works of art. The State Bank approved the conversion of its former library building into a museum in 2004, while conservation and collection development continued over several years.

The completed museum was formally inaugurated on 1 July 2011. It occupies a historic red-sandstone building constructed in the 1920s for the Imperial Bank of India and later used by the State Bank. The museum contains galleries devoted to pre-Islamic and Islamic coinage, Pakistani currency, postage stamps, the history of the State Bank, and its governors. The numismatic displays trace forms of exchange from the barter system and seals of the Indus Valley Civilization through punch-marked coins, Indo-Greek, Kushan, Hindu Shahi, Sultanate, Mughal, British Indian, and modern Pakistani issues. Other exhibits explain coin production through original dies, tools, machinery, and visual material, while the currency gallery presents Pakistani banknotes issued since independence alongside selected notes from other countries.

The art gallery is especially associated with four large paintings and mixed-media works by Sadequain. It also displays a restored triptych by Zahoor ul Akhlaq, donated by Ava Cawasjee, and provides space for temporary exhibitions by younger artists. Educational visits, guided tours, workshops, lectures, competitions, and special exhibitions are organized for schools and other groups, although programs vary according to the museum's schedule. As a specialist museum of economic and central-banking history, it connects development with art.