The Tretyakov Gallery, one of Russia’s leading art venues, unveiled a blockchain project to digitize exhibits. Anyone can participate by becoming a “sponsor of one masterpiece.”
Project overview
The gallery’s entire collection is going to be digitized via donations from private investors - users of the new ‘My Tretyakov’ platform. This initiative implies that all gallery’s exhibits will be available to users anywhere in the world where there is an internet connection. The platform is being developed in collaboration with the digital technology company RDI.Digital, the technology was created by Austrian company Riddle & Code.
The project was presented at the Business venue of the VII St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum. Anyone who wants to partake in the project will need to donate some amount to digitize the artwork. The system will randomly select an exhibit, a digital copy of which will be linked with the person or company, and this information will be put on the blockchain.
The donors can choose to remain anonymous or be mentioned every time someone sees a digital copy of the chosen artwork. It’s also possible to give your sponsorship to another person as a gift.
The system will take into account the interests of the project’s participants and allow them to collect information about the artworks they sponsor and create their own collections from the works housed at the Tretyakov Gallery. In the future, new services may be introduced which will be based on user behavior analysis.
Why is it important?
According to the representatives of the Tretyakov Gallery, their main goal is to attract new audiences to works of art and give users a sense of being part of the cultural heritage. With the help of the blockchain project, each person will have “the opportunity become closer to Russian art, which is collected, researched and guarded in the Tretyakov Gallery”.
It’s not the first time the blockchain is used in the art domain. In September, the first blockchain auction took place, where Andy Warhol's painting “14 small electric chairs” was sold in shares. The buyer acquired 49% of the work in digital shares, determined by a Smart Contract run on ethereum.
In China, there is a platform that allows you to buy and sell art on the blockchain. The system allows you to track where the painting came from and identify fakes.
Earlier in November, blockchain-based company Maecenas announced its partnership with John McAfee and cryptocurrency exchange Ethershift to digitize and tokenize works of Pablo Ruiz Picasso.