Ever since Facebook’s highly hyped rebranding to Meta in October 2021, the public imagination has been captivated by the nebulous entity known as “the Metaverse.” Across the New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes, and other mainstream media outlets, the term “metaverse” has populated a barrage of recent headlines – “What is the Metaverse?” “What’s All the Hype About the Metaverse?” “Is the Metaverse Just Marketing?”

The metaverse is not just an object of interest for Silicon Valley tech visionaries. Indeed, in the world of entertainment, arts and culture, and museums, the metaverse has, too, entered the chat. From the launch of “Sotheby’s Metaverse,” to the emergence of metaverse-native art galleries and the novel collaboration between Fortnite and the Serpentine, it appears that the metaverse may have growing relevance for artists, culture enthusiasts, and museums alike.

What is even is the metaverse? What potential does it hold for mainstream entertainment? How is the metaverse colliding with the art industry? And, what might the metaverse mean for traditional museums?

Read as we examine the possibilities that this nascent technology may hold:

What is the Metaverse?

In the most simple of terms, a metaverse is a virtual world. More specifically, the New York Times describes the metaverse as “the convergence of two ideas that have been around for many years: virtual reality and a digital second life.” The metaverse is also premised upon the notion of a digital economy, where users can purchase and exchange virtual goods such as NFTs and digital “wearables.”

Right now, the capital-M Metaverse, denoting a single, interoperable virtual world, is a largely speculative idea. In reality, there are many metaverses, each owned by a different company – these include Decentraland, Somnium Space, The Sandbox, and Cryptovoxels.

The term “metaverse” is frequently used alongside, or even interchangeably with, “Web3.” However, it is important to distinguish between these concepts. The metaverse is still a fledgling idea – whether it represents a fantastic dream, an imminent reality, or Silicon Valley’s latest brainchild depends on who you ask. On the other hand, Web3 describes a related, but more specific iteration of the internet – one which rejects our current model of the web, governed by companies that provide services in exchange for personal data. Instead, Web3 is based on the blockchain, where “data is open and distributed and collectively owned by peer-to-peer networks.”

The Metaverse and the Transformation of Entertainment

The metaverse has already begun to recast the future of entertainment, with its potential applications spanning music, sports, themed attractions, education, and, of course, gaming. 

Take, for example, the music industry. Billboard anticipates that the metaverse will “give music a whole new space to operate and monetize.” This may begin with concerts streaming in the metaverse, but such is only a debut. In early 2022, virtual platform The Sandbox announced a new partnership with Warner Music Group to create “the first music-themed world” within their gaming metaverse. Individual artists, too, are pioneering their own virtual worlds – from Snoop Dogg's “Snoopverse” to high-profile DJ Steve Aoiki’s “A0K1VERSE.”

Themed entertainment is also diving into the metaverse. Disney just recently appointed a new executive to pilot the its foray into the metaverse, describing this new tech vision as “the next great storytelling frontier.”

The sports industry, too, kicked off 2022 with a fresh interest in the metaverse. After launching a virtual store in the Roblox video game in 2021, the NFL expanded its presence with the 2022 release of ‘NFL Tycoon,” a game in which players build their own NFL-centered world and try their hand at being a team owner.”

Unsurprisingly, today’s highly sophisticated iterations of the metaverse exist in the world of gaming, where companies like Roblox and Epic Games have constructed the most trailblazing metaverses so far. Such being the case, the Future Art Ecosystems: Art x Metaverse (the Serpentine’s annual strategic briefing on 21st century cultural infrastructure) notes that “the video games industry is frontlining in this sphere [of advanced virtual environments], having spent decades developing, prototyping and operationalising the technologies for the creation of hybrid digital-physical experiences.” 

This being the case, “game technologies are becoming the fundamental infrastructure for the metaverse.”

Art in the Metaverse

The commercial art world has, too, begun to inhabit the metaverse. In particular, artists and collectors are beginning to occupy virtual worlds, which offer new potential for social exchange as well as creating, showcasing, selling, and purchasing digital artworks. As creative media expert Dhiren Dasu noted recently in Art Newspaper, “The metaverse presents a possible future where creators, gallerists and collectors can actually interact in a space untethered from their physical location.”

For many artists, the metaverse and NFTs have the potential to overcome the common barriers and traditional elitism that afflict the art world. Just as NFTs may help artists “to create and share their art in a way that hadn’t previously been afforded to them,” the metaverse offers a platform for creators to connect with collectors and curators outside the bounds of the traditional art market. The metaverse also has the capacity to democratize the historically exclusive passtime of art collecting by transcending issues related to “storage, location, display, transparency, authenticity and accessibility.”

What does a metaverse art world look like in practice?

Metaverse Art Marketplaces

For one, the metaverse has emerged as the location for new marketplaces. Perhaps most prominently, long-established art broker Sotheby’s announced the launch of their own Metaverse, described as “a proprietary, custom NFT marketplace that will serve as a destination for NFT sales.”

Less established entities, including Art Haus, offer a “metaverse artist residency,” as well as special membership for collectors to gain access to exclusive digital auctions. 

Metaverse Galleries

In platforms like Cryptovoxels, metaverse-native art galleries are booming. Within the platform, users can buy and occupy virtual parcels, allowing them to build galleries, host auctions, and showcase their personal cryptoart collections. One particularly popular Cryptovoxel gallery, B.20 Monument, features NFT artworks by the infamous Beeple. Another, imnotArt Community Gallery, switches up their virtual space weekly with new featured artists and NFTs. Self-described “cyber curators” also inhabit Cryptovoxels, in spaces like the Fortune Gallery. 

The Metaverse-Native NFT Museum

Several entities have come forth in recent months with ambitious plans to construct sprawling metaverse museums, virtual walls bedecked with NFTs. For example, the team at RaveSpace announced in late 2021 their plans to launch Musee Dezentral, “the world’s first Blockchain-built virtual NFT museum.” 

The project promises to disrupt the traditional process of art curation, giving users the opportunity to feature their own NFTs in the museum’s collection, and allowing the museum to evolve organically. Pixlr Genesis also pronounced their intent to build the world’s preeminent digital art museum, with plans “to rival the Louvre, MOMA and National Gallery.”

However, for museums that aren’t born out of cryptoart, what promise might the metaverse hold?

How Museums and Cultural Organizations Are Engaging with the Metaverse

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, museums have demonstrated the extensive ways they can engage audiences and offer educational opportunities in the virtual realm. As cultural organizations continue to examine their vast potentials in the digital world, many are setting goals outside of driving footfall to physical sites. Already, a number of institutions have begun to tentatively explore the metaverse, including its applications for digitizing collections, offering new types of exhibitions, developing social communities, creating immersive experiences, and gamifying engagement:

1. Expanded Digitization of Collections

In late 2021, the State Hermitage Museum’s head of contemporary art made headlines with the controversial claim that “all museums will build a metaverse copy using NFTs,” also known as a digital twin. While this may seem like an extreme claim, countless museums have already digitized their collections online and through open access initiatives, and a minority have even spearheaded the recreation of their collections in augmented and virtual reality.

Now, a handful of organizations, including the FC Francisco Carolinum Linz, are establishing their metaverse locations.

As museums seek ways not just to digitize their collections, but render their offerings accessible and immersive in virtual environments, the metaverse might fit the bill.

2. Going Beyond AR and VR Experiences

In recent years, a number of museums have pioneered augmented and virtual reality-based exhibitions. From the V&A’s Curious Alice to the Louvre’s ‘Mona Lisa: Beyond the Glass,” it’s clear that virtual reality has overcome traditionalist skepticism in the arts and cultural space and even become common practice. As extended reality gains more support as a tool for cultural engagement, it appears the next frontier for innovative exhibitions may be the metaverse.

In Fall 2021, a touring NFT exhibition, SNOWCA$H, curated by Georg Bak and Daniel Baumann made its debut in Kunsthalle Zürich. Referring to the 1992 Cyberpunk novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (who coined the term “metaverse”), the exhibit spans not only a physical space, but multiple metaverses. Shortly thereafter, The State Hermitage Museum in Russia unveiled a sweeping NFT exhibition. Entitled the “The Ethereal Aether,” the featured work “explores all things crypto, creative, and blockchain.”

Then, in December 2021, the Toledo Museum of Art launched Doppelgänger in the Decentraland metaverse, which is “an immersive new facet” of artist Stan Douglas’ acclaimed film by the same name, on view at the Museum until May 2022. Meanwhile, Verse: Immersive NFT Exhibit is now on display at the San Francisco Mint, comprising a collection of augmented reality holograms and NFT artwork by top-selling crypto-artists.

3. Creating Cutting-Edge Social Communities

On Web2, the emergence and adoption of social media offered a transformative avenue for audience and community engagement by cultural organizations. Might the metaverse provide another new opportunity for the #musesocial movement? It certainly seems possible. 

The metaverse has already produced new possibilities for social experiences and community creation, unbound by geographical limitations. Indeed, the gaming platforms which currently prevail as the most sophisticated versions of the metaverse are key sites for social interaction. In the art world, initiatives like Art & Coffee are already tapping into this potential, hosting events for artists and collectors and providing them with multiple spaces in the metaverse “to present themself, share ideas and build communities.”

According to Kay Watson, Head of Arts Technologies at the Serpentine, “the metaverse might increase opportunities for interaction with audiences around a project, exhibition or collection, building dedicated communities and creating experiences that can be framed by virtual worlds and extend beyond them.”

4. Driving Museum Engagement through Gamification

The introduction of gaming tactics to museum education and engagement has been a topic of interest for some time. Now, it appears the metaverse may power even more sophisticated gamification initiatives in cultural organizations. 

For example, the National Museum of Korea set up an online world Minecraft, designed as an identical replica of the museum located in Seoul. Inside the virtual world, users can explore the museum as they seek to clear 10 missions.

In January 2022, Fortnite, artist KAWS, and Serpentine announced a novel type of collaboration to create “a first-of-its-kind experience bridging the physical and virtual art worlds.” As part of the initiative, the exhibition “NEW FICTION” was opened within the Serpentine Galleries, as well as in Fortnite Creative.

Such a collaboration could have substantial implications for museums trying to expand their reach. As noted by Steven Brady, Chief Technology Officer at the Barnes Foundation, “Even if 1% of Fortnite players over the course of the [Serpentine x KAWS] exhibition show up to the virtual gallery, it’ll probably be multiple of how many people could physically get into the Serpentine Galleries in London.”

5. Powering Immersive Education

As centers not just for social engagement, but education, museums may also look to the myriad ways the metaverse can power more immersive learning. Initial research certainly points to the efficacy of learning in the virtual environments: PwC found that learners trained with VR were up to 275% more confident to act on what they learned after training – a 40% improvement over in-person classroom learning, and a 35% improvement over e-learning. 

Roblox has already set their sights on K-12 education. The gaming giant recently announced a $10 million fund to support the development of virtual learning experiences on the platform, with plans to make education in the metaverse a reality.

While few, if any, cultural organizations have yet to initiate educational programming within the metaverse, this is yet another potential within our emergent virtual world that museums may seize in the years to come.

Museums in the Metaverse – What Might the Future Hold?

We’re still many years away from fully realizing the metaverse, which is still in its infancy. Right now, it may seem like an amorphous daydream, but as Fast Company has noted, years from now, “the metaverse could make the internet seem as antiquated as the telegraph.”

What role might museums play in shaping our virtual future? How will cultural entities inhabit the metaverse?

These remain open questions. To date, the Serpentine’s Future Art Ecosystems: Art x Metaverse serves as one of the most comprehensive visions of museums’ path forward in the metaverse. As stressed in this recent publication, in order for museums to successfully establish themselves as contenders in our burgeoning virtual world, the cultural sector would need to commit to a far greater level of industry solidarity. To this end, Serpentine proffers a vision of “21st-century cultural infrastructure at the scale of the cultural sector as a symbiotic ecosystem, rather than as a patchwork of individual organisations competing with each other for engagement, funds and relevance.” Through such an alliance, museums could gain significant leverage to influence the evolution of the metaverse and their place in it.

Given the proliferation and investment in metaverse technologies across music, sports, gaming, and commercial arts, it’s important to consider the possibility that immersive virtual experiences may become standard practice in entertainment. Already, the top barrier to visiting a cultural institution is preferring another leisure activity. This being the case, museums may not be able to afford to be outpaced by the innovation taking place in adjacent industries. To compete for the limited attention of consumers, entering the metaverse might be necessary for museums to offer relevant modes of engagement.

As cultural institutions continue to make sense of their role outside of their own walls and embrace digital offerings as part of the new normal, it is crucial that they have a seat at the table when it comes to the new technologies that may alter the course of audience engagement, artistic creation, and cultural consumption.

Further Reading & Watching:

• How 21 Museums and Cultural Institutions Engaged with NFTs in 2021

• On-Demand Webinar: How Cultural Organizations are Envisioning Digital Engagement, Hybrid Models, and Innovation in 2022 and Beyond

• What is the metaverse and why does it matter to the art world? Experts weigh in and predict its future impact

Looking to power digital innovation at your organization? Get in touch with Cuseum!