Imagine a world where you carry millions of dollars of art in your mobile phone’s digital wallet and own colors.
This is the world of NFT.
The term “NFT” or “non-fungible token” refers to proof of ownership of digital assets on the blockchain, such as art, music, videos, tweets, and even memes. Each of these assets has its own fingerprint and cannot be exchanged, disassembled, duplicated or counterfeited. Most NFTs now exist in the Ethereum blockchain, a digital public ledger used to record all transactions in the cryptocurrency Ethereum and other smart contracts.
NFTs have become a highly innovative way for artists to share, sell and distribute their work online. They create rarity in areas where it did not previously exist, allowing ownership of digital objects in ways previously impossible. Artists not only enjoy the benefits of the first sale using NFTs, but also receive a cut each time their work is available. For many digital creators, NFTs are positioned as a mediator between the perfect fusion of technology and art, shortage and infinite fertility in the digital age. And now the museum wants.
Proponents of the merger argue that NFTs will enable new ways of interacting with art in the 21st century while democratizing art, funding museums more, and helping living creators. .. And while you may want to adopt an NFT with all of these innovative possibilities, at the crossroads of museums and the NFT art market, it’s a controversial subject with costly and sometimes unknown interests. There is an ethical debate that becomes.
In March 2021, auction house Christie sold artist Beeple’s digital collage “EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS” for $ 69 million, making Beeple the first major auction house to sell NFTs with artwork. Became one of the three most valuable artists alive. For comparison, one of the recent Van Goghs on the market sold for $ 35.8 million. This is only half of “every day”. Not surprisingly, the museum’s interest began with the success of Beeple’s overnight and Christie’s huge payday. The Uffizi Gallery became one of the first large institutions to create and sell NFTs from their collections in May 2021. Uffizi, enthusiastic about repairing the economic damage of the pandemic, sold Michelangelo’s “Donitondo” NFT for $ 170,000. .. Two months later, the Hermitage Museum, one of the largest museums in the world, sold NFTs of works by Da Vinci, Van Gogh and Kandinsky to fund a restoration project. By September, the British Museum had created two NFTs for Hokusai’s “Rogue” for a pair of lucky (and incredibly wealthy) individuals.
Things get messy here.
For one thing, legal issues related to copyright and museum image monetization, such as image license revenue, have not yet been resolved. Perhaps one of the most fascinating examples of this happened about two weeks ago between the Congo Plantation Workers Art League (CATPC) and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. After VMFA continued to refuse to lend Congolese sculptures to Art League museums and their origins, CATPC members pulled images of the sculptures from the web and used them to reuse NFTs. Created and sold in the form of. The igniter of a complex court battle.
The economic benefits of selling NFTs for a struggling museum are important, but the sales of digital art like Beeple are so high that it’s a bubble waiting for this market to burst. Some people wonder. It’s premature to say, but a “silent crash” occurred in April last year when the daily average of NFTs plummeted by 85% (which claims the market simply fixed itself). There are people). Not only that, assets that are valuable in the form of digital art and are easily transferable can be used in illegal transactions. This is the digital history of NFTs, but it was sold to NFTs.
In addition to financial, legal, and logistic considerations, there are also ethical concerns. What kind of art do you need to create as an NFT? Need to benefit from art stolen or procured by violent, often colonial means? Is it correct that museums created for public access to art sell NFTs that only a handful of wealthy people can buy?
There is no doubt that NFTs have the potential to revolutionize the world of art, attract a larger audience and create new sources of funding for museums. But there’s also something tricky about interacting with art in a virtual world backed by technology that destroys physical things. Ethereum is working on more environmentally friendly technology, but a single transaction on this blockchain consumes as much energy as the average American home uses in a week. The carbon footprint is equivalent to 140,893 transactions on a Visa credit card or 10,595 hours on YouTube. Beeple’s “EVERYDAYS” alone produced the same amount of CO2 emissions as 13 households annually. Other cryptocurrencies consume even more energy: Bitcoin, home to a small number of NFTs such as those owned by artist Grimes, is estimated to emit more carbon dioxide than Argentina. The NFT surge is certainly exciting, but the cost is not negligible.
The benefits that museums enjoy by participating in the NFT Art Market are clear. But do they outweigh their debt? As an institution established for the public good, it is against allowing selected wealthy few people to own NFTs of valuable works that exist only by consuming enormous amounts of energy. It seems that. For better or for worse, museums have justified a world where exorbitant prices and ethical interests have not yet been fully explored. Perhaps this is the future of the art world. NFTs are becoming more and more popular with both artists and institutions. However, the idea that owning an NFT of Van Gogh’s beautiful cypress trees and Bruegel’s snow scene and knowing these environments themselves could be obscured by the devastating effects of such technology. It can be very disturbing. Museums are blessed with weather in increasingly volatile climates, and fragments of art and culture deteriorate over time, but these digital images remain intact on the blockchain. Immortal, untouchable art, permanently accessible through a glowing screen.
