The Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Artte Contemporanea in Italy has made a big addition to its everlasting assortment, marking a milestone on the planet of digital artwork. The museum has acquired its first non-fungible token (NFT) art work, a provocative piece created and donated by the famend digital artist Beeple.
The art work, named “FTX Board Assembly, Day #5676 11.13.2022 (2023),” is a singular mix of digital and conventional artwork kinds. It exists each as a one-of-a-kind NFT and an oil portray. The piece, rendered in Beeple’s distinctive hyperreal fashion, imagines a day within the server room of the now-defunct crypto alternate, FTX.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the museum director, expressed her appreciation for Beeple’s work, stating it represents a big contribution that brings a Twenty first-century medium into the museum’s assortment. The art work, she famous, combines the digital and bodily realms in a compelling means.
The piece just isn’t with out controversy. It presents a number of variations of FTX’s frontman, Sam Bankman-Fried, in express sexual encounters with himself, a reference to rumored sexual escapades amongst FTX’s employees. The NFT carries an artist’s word that reads “board-certified clusterfuck.”
The museum needed to censor the picture to share it on its YouTube channel. Christov-Bakargiev commented on the art work’s express nature, suggesting it factors to the immature and narcissistic facets of the digital world. She famous that Beeple’s work questions the expertise and society that evolves in relation to that expertise, at the same time as he makes use of its techniques and constructions.
This acquisition follows the 2022 exhibition of Beeple’s “Human One (2021),” a video sculpture that had its world premiere on the Castello di Rivoli earlier than touring to M+ in Hong Kong.
The Castello di Rivoli just isn’t alone in its embrace of NFTs. Different museums, together with the Buffalo AKG Museum of Artwork and LACMA within the U.S., have additionally added NFTs to their collections.
Earlier this yr, the Centre Pompidou in France grew to become the primary French nationwide museum to accumulate on-chain artwork, reflecting the rising acceptance of NFTs within the conventional artwork world, regardless of the downturn within the crypto market.