RELATED: Photos from the Museum of American Finance Reopening Gala

As far recent museum reopenings go, the Museum of American Finance, which opens to the public tomorrow in its new home at 48 Wall St., has the potential to make the most meaningful contribution.

That was certainly the sense at the first opening event for the museum Monday night, a gala dinner for 200 museum supporters that honored John Whitehead.

“See that Liberty Bonds poster on display there? It tells a tremendous story of how the government raised money for World War I,” the founder and chairman of the museum, John Herzog, said. “We have a tremendous opportunity to bring these messages to the American people. We want the public to see the history, get it, enjoy it, and use it for the benefit of their financial lives.”

The museum has labored under the radar for most of its 20 years. In its new headquarters and with all-new exhibits, it is ready to shine. Those who have built it, particularly its founder and chairman, Mr. Herzog, deserve to be lauded for their achievement.

“Never was there a time when this kind of display was more valuable,” a consultant who works with distressed companies, Deborah Hicks Midanek, said.

The chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange, Duncan Niederauer, is particularly pleased to see the museum open. “Since September 11, when we closed the stock exchange to visitors, we’ve turned away 800,000 people a year. They ask our guards outside, ‘Is this the center of capitalism?’ Now we can send them here,” Mr. Niederauer said.

The exhibits are substantive. “I thought the section on derivative contracts was really useful. That’s the hardest thing to understand,” a trustee of the museum, Timothy Schantz, said.

Peter Low and William Behrens, who worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for many years together, admired the photos of the floor in the 1920s.

Muriel Siebert was on the lookout for the video interview in which she speaks of her experiences as the first woman on the New York Stock Exchange (it has not yet been put on exhibition).

The museum’s staff, led by its president, Lee Kjelleren, has plenty to do. One vital component will be creating a first-rate education program that will make the institution an essential component of financial literacy curricula in the schools. Creating exhibits around current financial events —on leverage and the dislocation of capital markets, for instance — would also be a great contribution.

It will be exciting to see what follows.

agordon@nysun.com