Project 6 - Museums and Institutional Adoption of NFTs
Research how institutions like LACMA, the Centre Pompidou, and the Toledo Museum of Art have engaged with NFT art. What curatorial and ethical challenges arise when museums collect or exhibit blockchain-based works?
https://www.lacma.org/lab/nfts-and-museum
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/l ... 234657137/
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https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/pompid ... ge-of-nfts
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https://toledomuseum.org/exhibitions/in ... algorithms
https://infiniteimages.toledomuseum.org ... zQ4MzgwNDQ.
Project 6 - Museums and Institutional Adoption of NFTs
Re: Project 6 - Museums and Institutional Adoption of NFTs
After reading this week's articles, I think NFTs have recently gained relevance in the world of contemporary art museums and cultural institutions. At first, the connection between NFTs and cryptocurrency marketplaces was seen as the most important aspect of their existence. Nevertheless, some museums, including the LACMA, the Centre Pompidou, and the Toledo Museum of Art, started paying attention to NFTs and positioning them as part of the history of art in the digital era. Thus, it can be assumed that besides being monetary assets, NFTs are cultural objects, which bring up a range of questions regarding ownership, conservation, technology, and artwork. The discussion about NFTs at the beginning of its development was mostly focused on speculative and monetary aspects. On the other hand, the engagement of these cultural institutions with NFTs shows that they treat blockchain-based artworks as important artifacts in the context of contemporary digital art.
LACMA has explored NFTs through its education and acquisition programs. "NFTs and the Museum" is the name of the series from The Art + Technology Lab. It explores the potential issues that museums may face regarding the collection of digital art through NFTs. This involves discussing how artists, curators, conservators, registrars, and lawyers can consider this new form of art collection. This is because NFTs are much more complicated compared to typical digital artworks, as they may include not only smart contracts and the chain but also additional information and sometimes files either on or off the chain.
The involvement of LACMA as an institution was even further highlighted after receiving a generous donation of works of blockchain-based art by the collector known as Cozomo de’ Medici. The donations were in the form of twenty-two pieces of art by various creators such as Dmitri Cherniak, Cai Guo-Qiang, Matt DesLauriers, and Monica Rizzolli, among other artists. This is evident to support the claims made by ARTnews about the increasing involvement of LACMA in the acquisition of new art pieces, especially through notable donations of NFTs. Furthermore, this highlights the potential of blockchain-based art to be understood within the context of experimental art, computational art, and conceptual art.
Another step toward the institutionalization of NFTs has been made by the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 2023, the Centre acquired 18 projects by 13 artists who explore the intersection of blockchain and artistic creation. These projects were created using different artistic approaches, such as crypto art, net art, new media, generative art, and conceptual art. Works belonging to the project and the artists' names include CryptoPunks by Larva Labs, Bitchcoin by Sarah Meyohas, 81 Horizons by Rafaël Rozendaal, among others. According to documentation at the Centre Pompidou, one of the goals was to examine the connection of NFTs to dematerialization, certification, and ownership of digital art.
I think the method that Centre Pompidou has adopted in its dealings with NFTs is particularly interesting due to the genealogical position that it takes in considering the place of NFTs within a larger narrative about conceptual art and digital art. Instead of simply considering NFTs as items of collectible value, they have chosen to position them within a greater context of discourses on immaterial art, certificating, systems, and digital property rights. It is important to do this since much of the earlier antecedent works within conceptual art and digital art similarly depended on instructions, certificating, code, and networks and not physical artworks.
A way that the Toledo Museum of Art has addressed this issue can be seen in their exhibition “Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms”. This exhibition explores the use of code, systems, and generation by artists to make artworks. In explaining the exhibition on its website, the museum emphasizes the importance of using algorithms as tools for creating works and states that these algorithms are used to create images through rule-based systems, random systems, and computation. By placing the current works, such as algorithmic and blockchain works, in the same context as computer art and rule-based art before them, the curatorial strategy becomes a more effective one in the sense that it does not treat NFTs as completely separate from other art histories.
Exhibitions of Toledo provide information about how generative art is not only dependent on technology but also on the creative process. In generative art, the artists have a system in place that produces results. In this case, there is some degree of surrendering of control, along with designing the structure and rules that govern the creation of the piece. Where NFTs or other forms of blockchain technology come into play, it becomes the duty of the museum to explain the aesthetic and technical factors that are involved in it.
These examples show the diverse strategies being used by museums to incorporate non-fungible tokens into their institutions. LACMA puts emphasis on educational value, collection, and the practicality of using NFTs inside the museum environment. The Centre Pompidou emphasizes historic and theoretical aspects of NFTs, putting them within the frame of the institution’s collection of new media art pieces. The Toledo Museum of Art uses its exhibition design to explain the connection between algorithms, generation, and modern art. Overall, this shows how all these institutions approach NFTs as elements of contemporary art history rather than mere internet phenomena or objects for speculation.
At the same time, various difficulties arise in regard to the acquisition and showcasing of blockchain art pieces by museums. One such problem is that of representation, given that most NFT pieces are represented either through digital files, computer codes, websites, video presentations, or interactive media. The act of exhibiting an NFT piece in a museum implies the decision of how to represent it – be it in terms of screens, projection surfaces, interactions, sound effects, scale, and even the interaction with the museum visitors. There might be a change in perception of the artwork when it is exhibited in a different environment.
An additional issue relates to preservation. Regular museums tend to preserve paintings, sculptures, prints, and photographs. The preservation of NFTs, on the other hand, demands different solutions. Although the token itself might be stored within the blockchain system, the associated artwork file could be stored somewhere else, e.g., in IPFS or some server or cloud computing system. In case of malfunction of the host infrastructure, museums will own the token but no longer have access to the artwork file. Therefore, museums need to preserve both the token and the artwork itself.
LACMA has explored NFTs through its education and acquisition programs. "NFTs and the Museum" is the name of the series from The Art + Technology Lab. It explores the potential issues that museums may face regarding the collection of digital art through NFTs. This involves discussing how artists, curators, conservators, registrars, and lawyers can consider this new form of art collection. This is because NFTs are much more complicated compared to typical digital artworks, as they may include not only smart contracts and the chain but also additional information and sometimes files either on or off the chain.
The involvement of LACMA as an institution was even further highlighted after receiving a generous donation of works of blockchain-based art by the collector known as Cozomo de’ Medici. The donations were in the form of twenty-two pieces of art by various creators such as Dmitri Cherniak, Cai Guo-Qiang, Matt DesLauriers, and Monica Rizzolli, among other artists. This is evident to support the claims made by ARTnews about the increasing involvement of LACMA in the acquisition of new art pieces, especially through notable donations of NFTs. Furthermore, this highlights the potential of blockchain-based art to be understood within the context of experimental art, computational art, and conceptual art.
Another step toward the institutionalization of NFTs has been made by the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 2023, the Centre acquired 18 projects by 13 artists who explore the intersection of blockchain and artistic creation. These projects were created using different artistic approaches, such as crypto art, net art, new media, generative art, and conceptual art. Works belonging to the project and the artists' names include CryptoPunks by Larva Labs, Bitchcoin by Sarah Meyohas, 81 Horizons by Rafaël Rozendaal, among others. According to documentation at the Centre Pompidou, one of the goals was to examine the connection of NFTs to dematerialization, certification, and ownership of digital art.
I think the method that Centre Pompidou has adopted in its dealings with NFTs is particularly interesting due to the genealogical position that it takes in considering the place of NFTs within a larger narrative about conceptual art and digital art. Instead of simply considering NFTs as items of collectible value, they have chosen to position them within a greater context of discourses on immaterial art, certificating, systems, and digital property rights. It is important to do this since much of the earlier antecedent works within conceptual art and digital art similarly depended on instructions, certificating, code, and networks and not physical artworks.
A way that the Toledo Museum of Art has addressed this issue can be seen in their exhibition “Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms”. This exhibition explores the use of code, systems, and generation by artists to make artworks. In explaining the exhibition on its website, the museum emphasizes the importance of using algorithms as tools for creating works and states that these algorithms are used to create images through rule-based systems, random systems, and computation. By placing the current works, such as algorithmic and blockchain works, in the same context as computer art and rule-based art before them, the curatorial strategy becomes a more effective one in the sense that it does not treat NFTs as completely separate from other art histories.
Exhibitions of Toledo provide information about how generative art is not only dependent on technology but also on the creative process. In generative art, the artists have a system in place that produces results. In this case, there is some degree of surrendering of control, along with designing the structure and rules that govern the creation of the piece. Where NFTs or other forms of blockchain technology come into play, it becomes the duty of the museum to explain the aesthetic and technical factors that are involved in it.
These examples show the diverse strategies being used by museums to incorporate non-fungible tokens into their institutions. LACMA puts emphasis on educational value, collection, and the practicality of using NFTs inside the museum environment. The Centre Pompidou emphasizes historic and theoretical aspects of NFTs, putting them within the frame of the institution’s collection of new media art pieces. The Toledo Museum of Art uses its exhibition design to explain the connection between algorithms, generation, and modern art. Overall, this shows how all these institutions approach NFTs as elements of contemporary art history rather than mere internet phenomena or objects for speculation.
At the same time, various difficulties arise in regard to the acquisition and showcasing of blockchain art pieces by museums. One such problem is that of representation, given that most NFT pieces are represented either through digital files, computer codes, websites, video presentations, or interactive media. The act of exhibiting an NFT piece in a museum implies the decision of how to represent it – be it in terms of screens, projection surfaces, interactions, sound effects, scale, and even the interaction with the museum visitors. There might be a change in perception of the artwork when it is exhibited in a different environment.
An additional issue relates to preservation. Regular museums tend to preserve paintings, sculptures, prints, and photographs. The preservation of NFTs, on the other hand, demands different solutions. Although the token itself might be stored within the blockchain system, the associated artwork file could be stored somewhere else, e.g., in IPFS or some server or cloud computing system. In case of malfunction of the host infrastructure, museums will own the token but no longer have access to the artwork file. Therefore, museums need to preserve both the token and the artwork itself.