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Museums In The Future: NFT Galleries?
NFTs have changed the art world by making it easier for people to see masterpieces. But when whole collections are turned into tokens, it raises questions about how ownership will work in museums in the future.
Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have been used by museums, people, and metaverse projects as a new way to reinvent themselves in front of their fans. Frida Kahlo’s family showed art and personal items that had never been seen before at a special event in Decentraland in August. The event was part of the city’s art week.
The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp in Belgium was the first museum in Europe to turn a classic work of art worth millions of euros into a token. The Kharkiv Art Museum in Ukraine started a new NFT collection with Binance to protect their cultural history and raise money in the middle of a conflict in the region.
But as everything turns into tokens, questions come up. Will museums of the future just be big NFT galleries where every piece of art has a digital version? How does real ownership work in this situation?
Hussein Hallak is the founder and CEO of Momentive, a company that works with museums to help them integrate NFT. Cointelegraph spoke with him to find out what the art world’s future might look like if NFT is used more.
Virtual museums are a place for Web3-native digital art, while traditional art and museums are adding a layer of Web3. So, Hallak thinks it’s “inevitable” that museums will one day turn into big NFT galleries.
“We think that everything will have an NFT, just like every product has a serial number.”
Hallak says that the only thing that needs to happen for technology to be everywhere is for it to be easier to use. For now, he thinks that museums will use NFTs most often to prove and take care of items in their collections. The second most common use would be to make digital editions of items available to the public.
“NFTs are an important part of tech innovation that museums can’t ignore if they want to move forward,” says Hallak. “But they must be part of a bigger plan for strategic modernization.”
When asked if fractional ownership makes valuable heirlooms held by museums less valuable, Hallak says the question is fair, but the answer is no. Art just becomes more accessible.
He compares it to how the value of a private company goes up when it goes public:
“Making art more accessible through fractional ownership or limited digital editions will probably increase interest, make people appreciate the art and the artist more, and raise the art’s value in the long run.”
Web3 is all about the ownership that comes with fragmentation. It’s one of the things that makes it different from the internet people used to know.
In the case of museums and the art up for auction at NFT, is it really ownership if the art is still being cared for in some way, or is it just a feeling of ownership?
Hallak sees NFTs as a way to support public art, not as a change in who is in charge.
“A more likely way for NFT to work is to pay for a public show of artworks and artifacts by making multiple digital copies.”
As seen with the museum in Belgium, NFTs will become more and more of a chance for museums to make money off of their collections and curatorial skills in a digital future.
A recent report said that by 2030, the NFT market will be worth close to $231 billion.
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