Author: Dr. | Fried
One of the most coveted masterpieces of art in the art world is one of the most famous paintings in the collections of top museums. Except for a very small number of buyers from rival countries who have the privilege of collecting some masterpieces, most ordinary people can only look at the precious famous paintings from a distance and cannot play with them.
In the past two years, the NFT art collection that has stirred up splashes in many fields has joined the museum's industrial map, and now even ordinary people have the opportunity to have world museum-level works! NFT digital versions of paintings no longer require expensive sky-high prices, and ordinary collectors can easily have them with limited funds.
Some museums from around the world are highly sensitive to information and react very quickly. We've seen some museums already announce that they will sell NFT versions of their collections. For these museums, it's a whole new way to increase commercial value and reach new audiences, and the sale of NFTs can compensate for the lost flow of money during the pandemic, and it's also an exploration of management or a demonstration of institutional power.
Today, Xiaobian will take you to understand which museums at home and abroad have joined the new track of the NFT digital collection, and what interesting things have they done?
1
Top international museums
1.1 St. Petersburg, Russia – Hermitage Museum
The Hermitage Museum, located in the Tsar's Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, is one of the world's four largest museums and joined the NFT's fiery bandwagon in 2021. The Hermitage Museum auctioned several of the most iconic masterpieces in its collection at the Binance NFT Market at the end of August last year – Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna Litta, Van Gogh's Judith and Lilac Bush, Vasily Kandinsky's Composition VI, and Claude Monet's A Corner of the Garden at Montgeron.
《Madonna Litta》
Director of the Hermitage Museum, Mikhail Mikhail Piotrovsky said the auction was "an important stage in the development of the relationship between humans and money, between humans and works of art", and that the NFT "created a democratic market environment that lowered the threshold for the sharing of precious luxury items, but also guaranteed the uniqueness of transactions and goods".
Piotrovsky described this attempt to enter the NFT as the first step in the digital development of the Hermitage Museum: "We will expand to find more digital opportunities, which are excellent opportunities for our museums and collections. Our team will try to use new technologies to build new digital museum experiments. ”
1.2 London, United Kingdom - British Museum
In addition to the Hermitage Museum, the British Museum, also one of the four largest museums in the world, has also joined the NFT circuit.
Last year, the British Museum partnered with NFT platform LaCollection to sell NFT versions of ukiyo-e master Katsushika Hokusai's masterpieces, including "Kanagawa Surf" and "Kaifeng Kushina" from the "Thirty-Six Views of Fugaku" series.
At the end of January this year, the two sides joined forces again, and the British Museum launched a second wave of collection NFTs. This time the protagonist is the British national treasure painter Tyner (JMW Turner, 1775-1851), and the cheapest painting NFT is only 799 (RMB 5,720).
JMW Turner
The NFT collection comes from 20 of the 50 Tyner watercolor paintings given to the museum by former Christie's executive Robert Wylie Lloyd (1868-1958), such as Shipwreck storm and the Colosseum.
Storm Shipwreck
According to Robert Wylie Lloyd's will, the paintings could not be borrowed, and the British Museum could only exhibit them for two of the weeks of February each year or on exceptional occasions, so they were quite rare.
The NFT digital innovation of the Hermitage Museum and the British Museum has given new meaning to many of the world's most precious artistic heritages, allowing more collectors to "own" their favorite works of art, while providing additional funding for museums. If the NFT "experiment" of these two museum giants is successful, it will open up a new industrial idea for other museums and help maintain the financially difficult museums to survive during the epidemic.
2
A new community of support for the arts
It has to be admitted that geographical restrictions and travel costs are the "high threshold" prevalent in offline museums. The NFT digital collection can raise more money for museums and help museums reach more audiences, otherwise some ordinary people may never come to offline museums in person to access these works of art.
The art world's progress in embracing unconventional art forms has been slow, which is to be expected. Throughout history, technological change and the development of ideological movements that deviate from the traditional standards of the moment have always encountered some resistance. For the traditional and ancient industry of museums, it is no small challenge to integrate new technologies with existing media while balancing public opinion and criticism. With the maturity of NFTs and encryption technologies, the art world has hatched a new era of art world.
We are pleased to see that the Smithsonian Museum of america, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and other major museums have hosted talks on the future development of NFTs in the art world. This means that the traditional art museum has begun to think about and change the process of new technologies in the new era.
Smithsonian Scholars Forum Youtube
2.1 The world's first NFT museum
The world's first physical NFT museum opened its doors on January 27 in Seattle, Washington, where visitors will be able to see digital art in person on a big screen.
The founders of the NFT Museum in Seattle are two technology executives, Jennifer Wong and Peter Hamilton. Although friends' views on the establishment of such a museum are polarized (in large part because such a project requires a lot of mental and financial resources, and they can't know what the return will be), they still hope that the NFT museum can become an enlightenment point for more people to learn about NFTs and NFT art.
Jennifer Wong said, "We can discuss the impact of NFT art on the old environment and dig deeper into some of these excellent works and popularize some of the new technologies that have been proven viable in this field." But we are more looking forward to using the NFT Museum as a place for diverse artistic exchanges. ”
The two founders believe that the museum is not just a gallery, but a place to differentiate itself, build communities and educate people. Viewers will watch digital art in physical space and think about the value of digital art, rather than through a phone or tablet.
"Physical spaces will continue to play an important role in the way we experience art and culture and connect with others," peter Hamilton said. "We don't know where the physical and digital lines will be drawn in the future, or what that will look like. But coming together as a community has both value and advantage. ”
Peter Hamilton does not endorse negative reviews of the NFT art collection. "I think it's a bit ridiculous for traditional artists not to explore the world of NFTs at this time," he said. "It's really just a different way of ingesting art, and there's not a lot of so-called art traps or scams."
The NFT Museum in Seattle is a prime example of this nascent industry. They opened an infinite window of display for once-niche works of art, making them more accessible to the general public. As people's understanding and acceptance of NFTs and metaverses increases, the possibilities for this new exhibition medium are endless.
3
Write at the end
Since NFTs are still a relatively new industry, no one can predict how they will develop and change in the coming years, but for now we can already see that NFTs create endless possibilities for the combination of traditional art fields and technology. They can not only provide a platform for future artists, but also allow museums and other social and educational institutions to more vividly present their works of art to young audiences in ways that were previously impossible to achieve, thus preserving these excellent historical cultures.
Now, the museum is no longer a simple cultural and historical carrier, but also can be linked with the Internet, science and technology, and create a dazzling spark. Many museums digitize their collections through modern technologies such as three-dimensional image technology, virtual reality technology, and Internet intercourse technology, and reproduce them on the network platform with multi-dimensional and realistic effects, allowing users to immerse themselves in browsing museums and interacting virtually on the network platform without leaving home. Clearing spatial barriers to cultural dissemination and national border barriers to world cultural exchanges.
The construction of digital museums will surely become an important part of the comprehensive development of society, culture, science and technology, and life, provide intelligent ways for the field of education, and become a new force for social science education. At the moment of national entertainment, the construction of digital museums shows the possibility of more interactive ways, closely integrating cultural inheritance with entertainment life.