(Paris) The Center Pompidou announced on Friday that it had acquired its first NFTs, unique digital art objects that panicked the auction rooms, becoming the first French public institution to do so.
“This is the first acquisition of a set of NFTs by a French public institution and the first of this importance by an institution dedicated to modern and contemporary art,” the museum said in a press release.
The NFT, for “non-fungible token” or non-fungible token, is a digital format that allows any virtual object – image, photo, animation, video or piece of music – to be associated with a certificate of authenticity recorded on a chain. block (or “blockchain”), the technology that supports cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
The museum’s acquisition commission has selected 18 projects by 13 French and international artists, who “enter the collection by donation or by purchase”.
“This enrichment is part of the strategy of the National Museum of Modern Art, since its origins, of supporting artists in the conquest of new means of creation”, underlined the Center Pompidou.
These works, whose authors are unknown to the general public, come from crypto-art, plastic arts, net-art and generative art, a form of digital creation using algorithms.
They reflect, according to the museum, “the astonishing richness of the forms of artistic creation linked to the blockchain, and the variety of positions adopted by artists in the face of this phenomenon”.
Objects prized by collectors, phenomena in auction rooms, NFTs have shaken up the art and culture markets, even if the speculative fever has subsided somewhat in recent months.
Previously, the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco in the United States announced in mid-January the acquisition of its first NFT.