Over the last year, major news headlines, social media discussions, and all corners of the Internet have been speculating about the latest novel trends in technology. If you have spent any time at all online, you have likely come across some of the latest buzzwords – namely, NFTs, cryptoart, Web 3, the Metaverse, and any number of related phrases.

While these may sound like high-tech hype terms, as we have examined in recent months, both NFTs and the nebulous entity known as “the Metaverse” may have very real implications for museums. Indeed, when it comes to NFTs, a number of cultural organizations have already begun making moves. This began with tentative curiosity in 2021, when prominent institutions started organizing educational programming on the novel phenomenon known as NFTs. We even witnessed a handful of museums experiment with minting, monetizing, and accessioning NFT artworks.

Now, as 2022 rolls forward, engagement with NFTs in the arts and cultural space is only growing. In addition to producing educational resources, we are now seeing an uptick of museums seriously exploring NFT-based collections and exhibitions, as well as the possibilities for cryptoart revenue streams. Additionally, several NFT-based museums have emerged – a whole new class of art institutions.

With these developments in mind, let’s dive into some examples of how museums are interacting with NFTs in 2022.

Educational Programs & Lectures

As was the case in 2021, museums are continuing to step up as educators on the nascent, and often puzzling, concept of NFTs. NFT-focused programming has ranged from open dialogues to instructional seminars on how to produce, purchase, and sell NFTs.

1. Pérez Art Museum Miami
NFTs captured the popular imagination in 2021, and many experts are predicting that they will continue to change the world of digital art. To explore this, the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) sponsored a virtual event entitled "NFTs: The Ahead 500 Years" in order to examine “how NFTs have changed the practice of digital art, where NFTs sit in the broader tradition of digital art, and where this all might be headed.”

2. Museum of Modern Art
What does modern art look like to artificial intelligence? This was a question that artist Refik Anadol sought to explore as part of a new project, which involved training an AI model on metadata and images from the Museum of Modern Art. The new digital artworks were then released as NFTs. To shed light on this project and “the buzziest new way to create and collect art,” the MoMA held a special program with Anadol and other curators entitled “Evening In: The Art of NFTs.”

3. Tampa Museum of Art
Approaching the topic from a legal perspective, Tampa Museum of Art hosted an event titled “Lawyers for the Arts: NFT Digital Technology” back in March. They explored a range of concepts such as NFTs, the Metaverse, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrency, and explored the relationship between NFTs and trademark infringement, publicity rights, and all things in between.

Museums and NFT Exhibitions

NFTs exhibitions in museums — *Source: Asia Art Center, Taipei*

As NFTs are recognized as the latest mode of artistic creation and innovation, many museums are moving beyond serving as neutral educators on NFTs and beginning to acquire crypto art collections and host NFT exhibitions.

4. Asia Art Center, Taipei
Since its founding in Taiwan in 1982, the Asia Art Center has developed into a prominent proponent of modern and contemporary art in the region, with two facilities in Taipei, one in Beijing, and a fourth in Shanghai. The Asia Art Center in Taipei held an NFT exhibition in February 2022 to showcase the NFTs of several artists, mostly from Asia. A number of NFTs depicting Asian culture were included, and participants were drawn from Taiwan, China, South Korea, Japan, and others.

5. Dubai Culture
In early 2022, Dubai Culture hosted its first NFT art exhibition, featuring 50 works made by artists in the United Arab Emirates. This exhibition came about in collaboration with Morrow Collective, an NFT curatorial platform, and a physical showcase of the artworks began at Al Safa Art and Design Library on January 15, 2022. The exhibition includes works by artists Khalid Al Banna, Alia Al Gaoud, Dalal Ahmed, Marwan Shakarchi and Gigi Gorlova, which are on sale on OpenSea, an NFT marketplace (prices range from .2 ETH Ethereum to 6 ETH, or $600 to $18,000 USD).

With this exhibition, Dubai Culture hopes to embrace “the use of innovative new solutions within the arts and culture space to support and retain local and UAE-based talent”, as well as make art accessible to “everyone, everywhere.”

6. Brattleboro Museum & Art Center
Up in Vermont, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center presented Anne Spalter: The Wonder Of It All, a new exhibition with a heavy focus on NFTs and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

NFTs as a New Revenue Stream

Museums have suffered significant financial losses over the last several years, while NFTs have simultaneously risen to prominence as one of the most lucrative investments and business endeavors. Thus, beyond hosting NFT-based exhibitions, there has been a growing interest in the possibilities that NFTs hold to serve as a new stream of income for museums.

7. Meta History: Museum of War
Meta History: Museum of War was launched as an innovative effort to raise funds using NFTs in support of Ukraine during the Russian invasion. The virtual museum aims to preserve the history and statehood of Ukraine by documenting the ongoing Russian attacks using NFTs. Each NFT is worth 0.15 Ethereum, or $500. As of early April, Ukraine had sold more than 1,200 NFTs, raising more than $600,000 to go towards rebuilding efforts.

8. British Museum
When most other museums were still skeptical about NFTs, the British Museum was an early adopter. In 2021, the museum joined forces with the French start-up LaCollection to sell NFTs of 200 Hokusai works, including "The Great Wave" (which sold for 10.6 ETH, approximately $45,000 USD). This year, the Museum has continued its partnership with LaCollection to sell 20 of J.M.W. Turner’s watercolors in the form of NFTs, with Ultra Rare Turner editions priced at €4,999.

9. Belvedere Museum
In its attempt to expand operations into the NFT space, the Belvedere Museum in Vienna has partnered with arteQ, an NFT investment firm. For Valentine’s Day, the museum released a digital replica of Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss, which was divided into a 100-by-100 grid and sold as 10,000 NFTs. The cost for one fraction of the digital image is $2,000, or 0.65 Ethereum.

10. Unit London
After suffering major financial losses during the pandemic, four major Italian cultural institutions – the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, the Complesso Monumentale della Pilotta in Parma and the Pinacoteca di Brera and Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan – are participating in the “Eternalizing Art History” project, which debuted at Unit London. The exhibition“displayed digital replicas of six famous Italian masterpieces by the likes of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci,” and each of the featured digital works is an NFT, priced between €100,000 and €250,000 ($114,000–$284,000). The participating institutions agreed to the reproductions in exchange for fifty percent of the net revenue from the sale of the works.

NFT-Native Museums

NFTs aren’t just an object of interest for established cultural institutions. In fact, we have also witnessed the emergence of NFT “museums” – some entirely virtual.

11. Seattle's NFT Museum
The Seattle NFT Museum (SNFTM), which is the world’s first and only physical NFT museum, opened its doors to the public on January 14, 2022, in Seattle's Belltown area. The museum was launched through a partnership between tech executives Jennifer Wong and Peter Hamilton. The goal of the Seattle NFT Museum is to create a space for the digital art world to come together for in-person experiences. According to Travel and Leisure, the 3,000-square-foot space is divided into three exhibition platforms, each containing 30 displays of NFT artworks by international and local artists.

12. Musee Dezentral
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.

The list of museums engaging with NFTs is ever-growing. Perhaps most significantly, in less than a year, we have seen museums move from primarily educating the public on NFTs to diving head-first into the crypto art world. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that this new technology holds ripe potential to transform artistic creation, museum practice, and institutional business models. While it remains to be seen how the cultural industry at large will adapt to this new landscape, if trends continue, we can anticipate a growing number of NFT exhibitions and sales by museums in the years to come.

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