New York Museum Gets into NFT

According to The Wall Street Journal, a New York museum the William S Paley Foundation wants to auction off over $70 million in art and use a portion of the revenues to fund non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and digital art.

Glen Lowry, the director of the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), revealed the concept.

According to the article, the charity that has been in charge of William Paley’s estate since his death intends to sell 29 of his 81 works at MoMA and use the funds to extend MoMA’s digital footprints.

To sell these artworks, the charity has approached Sotheby’s auction house.

Some of the artworks that are expected to be auctioned are Pablo Picasso’s “Guitar on a Table” and Francis Bacon’s “Three Studies for a Portrait of Henrietta Moraes,” all of which are valued at least $55 million.

Other pieces, including those by Renoir and Rousseau, would be auctioned off. The deal is estimated to bring somewhere between $70 and $100 million.

The majority of the earnings will benefit the museum, although the foundation intends to spend a part on other charitable initiatives.

According to Lowry, part of the monies might be used to purchase NFTs. He also did not exclude out utilizing the cash to start a streaming channel, host virtual exhibitions, or cooperate with higher institutions to provide online courses.

Lowry stated the idea of purchasing NFTs:

“We’re aware that when we purchase items, we give an imprimatur, but that doesn’t imply we should shun the domain.”

MoMA made its first step into the NFT area in 2021 when it offered information from its collection to AI artist Refik Anadol for his NFT/digital art show, Unsupervised.

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