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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Chris Powell | chris.powell@sos.arkansas.gov | (501) 683-0057
(LITTLE ROCK, Ark.) - 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.
“Accountable for Treasures” will remain on view in the
first-floor galleries of the Arkansas State Capitol through November 13.
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