I previously wrote an article compiling articles about NFTs and their utilization by museums to provide another source of revenue. Since then, Apollo magazine published another compelling article on their proper use by museums. Whether NFT sales or the spate of very public deaccessions and mass layoffs, it seems clear that museums hemorrhage money at the moment and lie in dire need of a funding transfusion.
As a lot of “froth” has accumulated around the NFT trend, that they provide scarcity will undoubtedly allow them to weather the fad in the world of collections. Scarcity is the beating heart of the collection, of the museum, of the collectible. We may all have an image of the Mona Lisa, but only the Louvre has the actual work. It epitomizes scarcity despite the flood of reproductions.
Similarly, we can all have a jpeg of Beeple’s $69 million NFT but with the blockchain know who actually owns it. To reiterate, the scarcity that NFTs can provide to infinitely reproducible media via blockchain technology will allow them to outlive the current trend.
Now, with museums selling NFTs of digital twins (Hermitage and Uffizi) and modified versions of works (Whitworth) in their collections, we see them creating another desperately needed source of funding. As someone who works on the less-visible collections side of the field, I see a way to fund equally-important-yet-less-contemplated parts of the collections. This, further, has the potential to relieve some of the additional financial pressure that the pandemic has imposed on institutions and that led many to deaccession parts of their collections. (Perhaps, at another time I can look into the supply and demand of NFTs and what their broad adoption could do to the marketplace for them.)
Deaccessioning is important. Feeling forced to deaccession for economic circumstances, however, pollutes the process. We want to see our collections not as assets to monetize when we need to pay the parking meter but as objects of cultural heritage for preservation. Deaccessioning in order to refine a collection makes sense. Deaccessioning to pay the bills makes us cringe. In the end, however, the owner of an object can do with it what they wish; it is only peer pressure that creates the stigma.
By creating digital editions of works in your collection, you can create a revenue stream untethered to the restrictions often placed on donor money or, better, tethered to specific areas such as conservation, green initiatives, or salaries for operations-oriented employees, the parts of the museum where the letters spelling out donor names do not seem to stick.
Further, that these digital editions could actually bear an affordable price for the general public further democratizes a collection and makes them a stakeholder in their local institution. If the museum publicly stated that proceeds of the sales went toward the preservation of the collection or operational costs and not acquisitions (like deacessions usually do), that might entice a different class of people to support the institution. Can I get mine in the gift shop?
Right now, most institutions probably want to gauge the success of the early adopters of the practice to fully determine if they can safely ford the NFT river. Understandable, but a mass adoption could foster acceptability in the practice and help it endure.
