Tag: Museum

Ukraine Launches ‘NFT Museum’ to Remember the War and Raise Funds

by Blockchain News

Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation announced last Friday that it has launched a MetaHistory NFT Museum, a blockchain-based collection of digital images of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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The Ukrainian government launched a non-fungible-token (NFT) collection to tell the story of Russian ongoing war in which it invaded its neighbour since February 24.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister who also runs the ministry of digital transformation, said that the collection is “like a museum of the Russian-Ukrainian war” that features a series of recent invasion events narrated in non-fungible tokens (NFT) in the form of digital art paired with written reflections.

NFTs are any digital items like GIFs, music, painting, drawing, etc., that are recorded on a Blockchain distributed database. NFTs are immutable, and this means that they cannot be modified or edited once uploaded.

Fedorov said each NFT art would represent a story from the war. Every piece of art would be backed by a reliable news source. “We want it to be cool, good-looking, and it takes time,” he stated. The executive said that minting the artwork in the form of NFTs will help preserve the story of the war while also raising funds for Ukraine.

Artists who want to be featured in the museum are allowed to submit a portfolio with their work. Art directors would then review such work to determine the suitability of a creator’s work. Successful artists will be given a particular historical event to create their work from, and after that, the museum will mint the final product as an NFT on the Ethereum blockchain.

Each NFT will sell for 0.15 Ether or just over $475. The funds will go directly to the Ministry of Digital Transformation’s crypto wallets and be used to facilitate humanitarian aid efforts in Ukraine.

Using Crypto Aid to Purchase Critical Supplies

Early this month, Ukraine announced plans to issue NFTs to fund its armed forces. The country made such an announcement after it recently started receiving an increasing number of crypto donations from individuals, businesses, corporations, and funders willing to support the Kyiv government.

On March 3, Mykhailo Fedorov hinted that the government would soon issue NFTs to help support its military. The government made the move after it cancelled its earlier plans to reward cryptocurrency donors with an airdrop, a free digital token normally used by the crypto community to encourage participation in a project.

Since the war began, Ukraine has received the majority of donations received in cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin and Ether and also raised more substantial sums through conventional means.

Ukraine has already received over $88 million in cryptocurrency donations alone. So far, the country has purchased supplies for its military with its crypto donations, including bulletproof vests, helmets, lunches, and medicines.

Image source: Shutterstock

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Superchief opens first-ever gallery dedicated to NFT art in New York City

by Cointelegraph

Mainstream adoption of nonfungible tokens doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon as the first-ever art gallery dedicated solely to NFT-backed art has opened in New York City. 

Superchief, an artist collective that operates galleries in New York and Los Angeles, announced the launch of the new gallery in the Union Square neighborhood. The gallery will display NFTs via a collaboration with Blackdove, a manufacturer of high-resolution digital art display screens.

The first exhibition, titled “Season One Starter Pack” (possibly a nod to the video game/digitial art cultural crossover) casts a wide net, featuring over 300 artists. Each of the artists will be auctioning a 1-of-1 NFT of their displayed work, as well as a 72 print drop. The gallery will be accepting cryptocurrency as well as credit card payments.

The exhibition joins a spate of dubious “first-ever” claims from various galleries and museums around the world eager to display NFT-based work (dubious because Cryptopunks were on display in galleries as early as 2017, and pioneers like Kevin Abosch have been displaying blockchain-based art well before NFTs were even a concept).

Russia’s Hermitage museum will be hosting a NFT exhibition set to include works from artists like Abosch, and today a museum in Beijing opened what they claimed to be the first “major” NFT exhibition.

Likewise, critic, collector and artist Kenny Schacter is planning a dual physical-and-virtual show at German gallery Nagel Draxler on April 9, possibly a world’s first, which will run simultaneously in the Metaverse at the Museum of Crypto Art and the Museum of Contemporary Digital Art.

The spree of institutions follow a now-legendary run of NFT headlines over the last few months. Once considered a technical niche, NFTs are now seemingly everywhere — even on the evening news. Likewise, major media publications which traditionally have ignored blockchain entirely are now covering NFTs, in part due to the absurd sums of money flooding into the space. This month, legendary auction house Christie’s sold a work by digital artist Beeple for over $69 million.