Non-Professional Vitae

Mar 16, 2012 by Scarinci in Home

DONALD SCARINCI
201-806-3386201-806-3386
DonaldScarinci@Yahoo.com

Donald Scarinci was born in Jersey City, NJ in 1956. His book, “David Brearley and the Making of the United States Constitution” received favorable academic reviews when it was published in 2005. The book was the first and only biography ever written about this important, but under-celebrated participant at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Brearley was later appointed by President George Washington to become the first federal district court judge for the District of New Jersey.

Scarinci’s recent book, “Redistricting and the Politics of Reform,” was published in 2010. It has been used as a primer on redistricting in at least a dozen states, where the decennial redistricting process is performed by appointed commissions.

Donald’s writing blends his academic training at New York University where he received an MA in English Language and Literature, with his legal training and experience. In addition to his work as a writer and a lawyer, Donald is a numismatic scholar who lectures on coin and art medal design. He was appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States to serve as a member of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, which is required by law to review and recommend designs for all coins and medals issued by the United States Mint.

Photography

As a student at Union Hill High School, Union City, NJ, Donald’s first job was as an assistant multi-media coordinator for the City of Union City. The part-time job was funded through a federal, Johnson-era program. Donald wrote press releases, photographed city events and produced multimedia presentations to promote city programs.

That experience caught the attention of Harold Bardes, a professional photographer with a studio in Union City. Bardes was quite successful at the time as a commercial photographer, and had previously served as the second president of the Professional Photographer’s Association (http://ppanj.com/index.php).

In the late 1970s, while Donald was in college and graduate
school, his photography experience extended to weddings and photojournalism. In 1978, he was a campaign photographer for former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley during his first campaign for the United States Senate.

Today, Donald enjoys fine art photography, street photography and urban landscapes. Some of his work can be viewed on his photography blog at www.fineartphotographystudios.com and on Flicker.

Numismatics

Donald has studied rare coins and medallic art for over 35 years. His interest in coins began in high school when his passion for ancient history led him to collect ancient Roman silver denarii from Julius Caesar to Gordian III. After he graduated from law school in 1983, he became interested in American colonial coins. He gradually broadened his interests to include Byzantine gold coins and medieval English hammered pennies. When Donald’s interests shifted from history to design, he began to focus on United States commemorative coins, world coins and art medals.

Educational institutions that have asked Donald to lecture on medallic art and hand-held sculpture include the British Museum, Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina, Forest Lawn Museum in California, and the International Federation for the Promotion of Medallic Art (FIDEM). Donald was a featured speaker in 2009 at the Samuel Dorsky symposium honoring Marcel Jovine, the former past president of the American Sculpture Association. He has often lectured at the request of collector organizations, including the American Numismatic Association (ANA) national shows and Summer Seminar, the Medal Collectors of America, the Colonial Coin Collectors Club, the Token and Medal Society, the American Numismatic Society (ANS), and once yearly at the New York Numismatic Club.

Since 2004, Donald has been a member of the ANS panel of experts to award the J. Sanford Saltus Award, the most prestigious award in the world for medallic art. He has been a member of the American Numismatic Association’s Numismatic Art Award for Excellence in Medallic Sculpture since 2005, that yearly recognizes America’s greatest sculptors. Since 2010, he has served on the Krause Publications Coin of the Year panel, which reviews international coin designs in various categories.

In 2005, Donald was appointed by the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury to serve on the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee. He has been qualified by the courts of the State of California to provide expert testimony about coins, and he has been called upon by the court in the State of New Jersey to advise and evaluate the numismatic holdings and value of estates.

Numismatic Affiliations