A new audience and new revenue streams for traditional museums
The French team of LaCollection is bringing certified traditional art to the blockchain, launching in collaboration with The British Museum. NFT collectors can now bid on digital twins of various artworks by Katsushika Hokusai, including The Great Wave.
Various NFTs, each of them a twin of an original artwork by Hokusai, are now being auctioned through LaCollection. These come with different levels of rarity. The Great Wave has the ‘super rare’ label, meaning that there are only 10 editions of the NFT. Right now, LaCollection is giving away 4 automatic rewards to collectors who buy 4 or more Hokusai artworks from the primary market and hold on to these. Details on this promotion can be found on the LaCollection website.
The concept of having rarities is also seen in traditional art, where artists sell prints alongside their original artwork. However, this time these prints are digital, based on historical masterpieces, with ownership stored on the blockchain as an NFT.
LaCollection presents an opportunity
Through LaCollection the traditional art world gets a shot at reaching a new, young, tech-savvy audience that’s ready to purchase and invest. The concept of this unique NFT marketplace attracted the interest of key people in the NFT space. Nicolas Julia and Adrien Montfort are both co-founders of the NFT-powered fantasy football game Sorare, while Thomas France is the co-founder of the Ledger hardware wallet.
These investors and LaCollection believe that art NFTs can become a new form of audience engagement for traditional museums. By creating a limited amount of non-fungible tokens or NFTs, a digital copy of a physical artwork provides some collectors with more value. In addition, it would open up opportunities for different forms of community engagement, and above all, revenue streams for museums hit by the COVID pandemic.
A new dawn for art
The emergence of blockchain technology and non-fungible tokens in particular has introduced a new ethic regarding ownership and a new philosophy to what we consider art. Digital artists previously lacked earning opportunities outside of commercial deals. They can now sell their artworks as NFTs directly to fans and collectors. Furthermore, while art galleries have a local reach, the NFT is global. Anyone with an internet connection and a digital wallet can take part.
Within this shift and with the rise of the COVID pandemic, museums search for alternatives. We’ve seen digital museums open up in virtual worlds like Decentraland, but La Collection will do things differently. Together with established museums, they will tokenize existing artworks, bringing new audiences to traditional art, and creating new revenue streams in the cultural sector..
Starting with The British Museum, LaCollection will give a second life to existing artworks by selling a digital version as an NFT. In addition, the NFT art platform will introduce new artists into the blockchain space. The endeavor allows museums to reach a tech savvy, young and wealthy audience, while also creating connections with that audience through NFT ownership. Furthermore, museums get to promote artworks from their exhibitions even when they are closed during the pandemic.
Planting trees
LaCollection mints their NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, an ecosystem that consumes lots of energy. That’s why LaCollection commits to battle climate change by planting trees. For every minted NFT, they will plant a tree with the National Trust, which offsets their carbon footprint. In this way, LaCollection follows the example of various other blockchain companies.
Furthermore, Ethereum will undergo a dramatic change in 2022, switching its consensus mechanism. This should reduce the carbon footprint of this particular blockchain ecosystem by 95%.
Learn more about LaCollection
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