Museums Are Cashing In on NFTs
Environmental issues are one reason barely a dozen museums have so far experimented with NFTs as an alternative revenue stream. The instability and opacity of unregulated cryptocurrencies, the difficulty of finding trusted tech partners and the cost of such partnerships are also cited by museum professionals as reasons for hesitancy. ...
One institution that has wasted no time in embracing NFTs as a fund-raising tool is the British Museum in London. Chaired by George Osborne, a former British finance minister, the museum entered into an exclusive five-year partnership in September with the Ethereum-based NFT platform LaCollection. The museum has since made several token drops, in editions varying in size from two to 10,000, using digital copies of works by Katsushika Hokusai and J.M.W. Turner. Prices ranged from $500 to $40,000. ...
On the final day of the Unit “Eternalizing Art History” show, Eve Smith, a lawyer, seemed impressed. “This is the second time I’ve been. I was completely astonished,” said Smith, gazing at a backlit ultra-high-resolution digital copy of Francesco Hayez’s 1896 painting of embracing lovers, “The Kiss,” in the Pinacoteca Brera museum in Milan.
“It looks like satin. It looks like there’s texture in what you’re looking at, but there isn’t,” Smith said. “Will I still want to go to the Brera? Of course.” ...
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