How about the Civil War? In this museum, it is name-checked briefly, for having brought about the greenback, or federal paper money.

A sign in one gallery reads, “Finance as a Force for Good.”

That’s a curious — or necessary, its boosters argue — take when polls show that barely half of Americans hold a positive view on capitalism.

Yet Mr. Milken and the friends-slash-donors whose beaming faces dangle off a faux gold “Tree of Generations” that looms over the center’s atrium are going full-on free enterprise. In exhibits, videos and artificial intelligence-bolstered holograms, they argue that the key to life is money, or the ability to get it.

“Without capital,” says the center’s executive director, Rachel Goslins, “you can’t build lives, dreams and families.”