Museums in the Blockchain Era
How can FRESCO be useful to Museums?
Nowadays, art museums face financial and competitive pressures more than ever.
The metropolitan museum of arts, the most popular museum in the United States, has gone through a deficit approaching $40 million and had forced the layoff of nearly 90 employees. The Museum of Modern Art also recently offered buyouts as well as struggles to raise money for its expansion. Rebranding, emphasizing on modern and contemporary art to accord with modern demand, and expanding bring a significant amount of cost that far exceed the donation and revenue.
In the UK, the British Museum, Tate Modern, and National Gallery face the challenge of substantial governmental sponsorship cut from $1.1 billion to $131 million in 2017. For small or middle size museums, digitalization of their collection and maintenance of a high-quality website are way beyond their budget. FRESCO, using blockchain technology, aims to solve these current museum problems, giving museums a space to promote their collection, attract visitors and donors, and keep to their missions. Here are two examples on FRESCO’s approach to benefit museums and institutions.
1. Exhibit and Promote Collections through FRES Trust
With the development of FRESCO protocol, renowned museums will participate with free tokens to add on to their valued works, resulting in the balance against possible market speculations.
Museum directors and board members will be able to allocate trust value to the museum’s collection, or any other relevant artwork that may be privately held while still carrying significant artistic value. Through this process, museums are able to promote their own collections, special exhibitions and programs, and support different kinds of artists. They function as the axis of academic value in art.
Example 1:
Echo Museum’s mission is to explore sound art. It collects, displays, and interprets contemporary and historic innovations in sound art. However, the specific form of art is often marginalized in the art world. Echo Museum places 10,000 FRESH Cash into works from its current exhibition. With this making the headline in FRESCO network, more art scholars and audience start to notice this new form of art. Through FRESCO’s broadcast, the public knowledge to the Museum’s exhibition grows, and it attracts 1,000 more visitors in that month.
2. Sell and Exchange Collections
Art museums, public foundations and institutions for art each have their individual missions in supporting art. For example, surveying 20th century American contemporary art, or exploring cross-cultural, new media experimentations. Sometimes the donations that come to the institutions do not align with the museum’s mission. Sometimes, the work is redundant or of lesser quality to other work in their collection or about to be acquired, or the demands of caring and storing a particular artwork is unduly difficult. Museums sometimes seek to de-acquisition items of their collection through sale, exchange, or other means. Proceeds from the sale of such works are used to purchase other works of art.
FRESCO enables museums, public foundations and institutions to search for potential pieces that better fit their demands by using filters to determine which pieces meet the needs of their collection, whether they already own the same piece, and if they can afford this sale or if there is the possibility for exchange.
Example 2:
Nova Foundation aims at collecting young and emerging artworks usually found in niche mediums. One of their long-time patrons donated their personal collection in its entirety to Nova Foundation, but 10 pieces of works are realistic photo shot in 1970s. However, by searching on FRESCO, Nova Foundation finds a museum that collect camera works and owns a considerable amount of FRES Cash which suggests its purchasing power. Therefore, Nova will be able to approach this museum and sell the recent donated photos to this museum, which will satisfy both parties.
Blockchain has profound effect in a world such as art, and FRESCO will aim to bring all sides of the art industry into this wave of technological innovation. Be a witness that one day, most of the world’s museums will have FRESCO accounts to display their magnificent collections on blockchain!
