#25 "We unlock the digital potential of eternity with NFTs"
According to the New York Times, many museums around the world have been discovering new "business models" and target groups through unusual ways of digital participation since coronavirus. The Historisches Museum Saar is not located in New York, London or Vienna, nor is it fourteen meters below Saarbrücken's Schlossplatz. However, as of today (07.07.2022), it is a digitally visible "first mover" in the blockchain.
In our summer edition of the podcast HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY, we talk to museum director Simon Matzerath and NIFTEE CEO and founder Carmelo lo Porto about the unimagined potential of NFTs for the digital conservation, sharing and monetization of museum art.
On the initiative and with the support of the European NFT platform NIFTEE, the museum in Saarland is the first German museum to offer a physical work of art from its exhibition for sale as an NFT (100 pieces at €200.00 each). The "Arrival of King Wilhelm I in Saarbrücken" (1880) by the Prussian court painter Anton von Werner (1843-1915) is 17 square meters in size and, after a one-year live restoration, can be experienced in color in the museum for the first time since 1944 and with around 200GB unchangeable in the decentralized blockchain.
SHOWNOTES:
Podcast episode "KING OF NFT" with Carmelo Lo Porto on the launch of NIFTEE
The book Hoffnung ist keine Strategie jetzthiervorbestellenDetailed episode description: Table of contents
- Simon Matzerath Personal information- First developments with NFTs in the museum world- How the collaboration came about in Saarbrücken- The idea for the collaboration with Museum Saar- The painting- Objectives of the project- Involvement of the team in the process and how the right artwork was found- How and where the NFTs can be acquired- How a painting is digitized- NFT as an important development for museums- Other exciting projects at NIFTEE- The potential of museums- The good purpose of the project- The vision of blockchain- Advice and success factors- Advice from Simon Matzerath- Advice from Carmelo Lo PortoFor this strategy interview, Christian Underwood went to his old home, the Saarland. To be more precise, to the Saar Historical Museum, which is located 14 meters below the Schlossplatz in Saarbrücken. At first glance, there is a very unusual couple here, as will become clear below. It is an absolute premiere. This episode is about the museum and NFT (Non-Fungible Token) landscape, which is growing together to some extent. Christian Underwood talks about this in an interview with Simon Matzerath, Director of the Saar Historical Museum on Schlossplatz in Saarbrücken, where you can experience the exciting and eventful history of the Franco-German border region of Saar since 1870. CarmeloLo Porto, CEO and founder of NIFTEE,the first European NFT platform, will also be a guest. He already spoke about the first NFTs launched at NIFTEE in an episode of Hope is not a Strategy at the end of last year. The episode is linked in the show notes.Simon Matzerath Personal detailsSimon Matzerath studied in Cologne, Bonn, Tübingen and Paris and holds a master's degree in early history. From 2006 to 2011 he was a research assistant at the Museum Zitadelle in Jülich, and from 2014 to 2016 co-curator of the sixth NRW State Archaeological Exhibition at the LVR State Museum in Bonn and the Lippisches Landesmuseum in Detmold. From 2016 to 2019, Mr. Matzerath was also project manager and co-curator for the founding of the Museum für Steinzeit und Gegenwart in Landau an der Isar in Lower Bavaria and has also been in Saarland since October 2016. Mr. Matzerath is the director of the Saar Historical Museum there, focusing on Saarland's regional history of the 19th and 20th centuries and, since 2020, on Saarbrücken Castle. He also has a teaching position at Saarland University for pre- and early history.
Initial developments with NFTs in the museum worldThe NFT theme can be a good strategy for positioning a company in a completely new business area. The unusual combination of NFTs and museums is also becoming increasingly popular. On Valentine's Day 2022, the Austrian Belvedere Gallery in Vienna sold Klimt's "The Kiss" for the first time in the form of 10,000 NFTs, and the British Museum has also started to display NFTs and has entered the NFT business as a museum, thus breaking completely new ground. The New York Times has also looked into this new "business model" and tried to quantify how much can be realized there. For museums, this can be a lot of money and an alternative source of income, even if the value of reproducing famous masterpieces goes beyond the financial value.
How the collaboration came about in Saarbrücken
The unusual collaboration between the museum in Saarbrücken and the NIFTEE platform came about through a typical Saarland process: you know someone who knows someone and then brings the right people together - one of Saarland's strengths. The museum and the NIFTEE office are only a few hundred meters apart. The decision to work together and implement the project was made very quickly at the first meeting. Saarland really does have everything, including everything innovative, but in a condensed form. Combined with the short distances, results can be produced particularly quickly here. Basically, there is a lot of movement in this region at the moment.
The idea for the collaboration with Museum SaarCarmeloLo Portohas already held major auctions with Cro and Kool Savas and has become famous and notorious for exciting NFT projects. From the very beginning of the work with NIFTEE, it was very important to the team to also shed light on the aspect of conservation. For the first time in the history of digital goods, blockchain and decentralized storage make it possible to verify documents. This means that it is always possible to clearly trace when and where each object comes from. This aspect has already been highlighted in the projects with Cro and Kool Savas. It is a way of preserving and recording pop culture. This way, even 20 to 30 years from now, people will always know who Kool Savas was with the lyrics King of Rap and what Cro stood for with his masks. This aspect was particularly exciting for NIFTEE, which is why it was not far-fetched to approach museums and pursue this type of conservation there. The Saar Museum was an obvious choice, not only because of the short distance, but also because of a very exciting painting. It had just been recently restored so that it could be captured in a freshly restored state. The original colors that make up the artwork will thus be forever traceable via the blockchain. NIFTEE attaches great importance to decentralized storage. This means that this object will also be available independently of the company and independently of the museum. In Saarland, there is nothing that does not exist.
The painting The 19th century painting used in this exciting project is a von Werner. Anton von Werner was a Prussian court painter. Even though history painting was not a major topic in art history for a while, this fact was not important for the project. After all, as a museum, we have the task of collecting, preserving, exhibiting and making available for research things that relate to Saarland history and also the history of the border region, i.e. Franco-German history. Some time ago, the museum acquired a cycle of 55 square meters of paintings by von Werner, which had not been on display for 70 years. It had been lost for over 70 years and was therefore in a very poor condition. That is why the 17 square meter main painting was restored - a painting that is even larger than Rembrandt's Night Watch. The painting is a pop painting. It is very colorful, incredibly intense with a lot of realism and a very large staging. On the other hand, the painting is also a difficult subject because it has something to do with nationalism. There have been many discussions in recent decades about this town hall cycle, which was opened to the public in 1880 and was recovered in a bombing raid in 1944 and has gone missing, with the question of what should be done with it. The Museum Saar sees its task as preserving the historical object, regardless of its size, and making it available for a discussion of its content - whether analog or digital. This is why the collaboration with NIFTEE is a good thematic fit.
Objective of the projectThe primary objective of the project is to disseminate the contents of the museum in the right context with objective information to as many people as possible. This can be achieved by digitizing the works of art. Money was not the decisive factor in this project, where the whole thing was first to be tested in a museum context. The primary aim was to refinance the project and support a charitable cause. For the Museum Saar and also for NIFTEE, the conservation line is central at this point in time. In order to make the project possible in the first instance, an auction was chosen to generate additional added value for the museum beyond conservation.
Involving the team in the process and how the right artwork was foundThe new combination of NFT and museum is not yet understood by everyone. The museum team also had to get to grips with the topic very intensively at the beginning. Together, however, they were able to get involved in the process. This painting was chosen because it was very concrete for the team. They spent over a year restoring it and put a lot of work into it. There was also no better time to record the original state of the painting, which has now been restored. It will have to be restored again in around 30 years' time. Should the painting be damaged during a loan or in some other context, the digital artwork is now available in high resolution in the blockchain. After all the work, this is a reassuring factor.
How and where the NFTs can be purchasedFrom Thursday, 07.07.2022 at 11:00 a.m., there will be 100 NFT copies of the artwork, each costing €200. Regardless of whether you are in the museum on site or whether you are particularly interested in history, you can now participate in this painting. This development is a particularly exciting factor. Normally, a painting can be viewed in a museum for a limited period of time at best. Not all objects are always on permanent display at the same time. As space is limited, there are not always the appropriate exhibition options. However, NFTs make it possible to keep something forever and access it at any time. If a painting needs to be restored in the future, which very often involves restoring the colors to their original state and tracing as precisely as possible how it was restored, by whom and when, then it is now immutable in the blockchain. In the case of the von Werner painting, it is also a painting that has a specific historical context. The historical context is often attempted to be changed afterwards. By writing it down in the blockchain, however, this is no longer possible. This is a unique development in the history of mankind.
How a painting is digitizedTo digitize the painting, there are professionals with whom we worked on the project. Simply put, they photographed and digitized the painting. However, this does not simply involve taking one photo, but rather a large number of high-resolution photos, which are then put together accordingly. The result is a unique digital copy. At the end of the process, this is saved in the blockchain and is not stored centrally on a server. This ensures that it can exist independently of the existence of NIFTEE, the Historisches Museum Saar or Saarland in general. NFT as an important development for museumsAll museums are always looking for the holy grail of conservation - both analog and digital. There are various digital approaches. Databases are created on servers, which then offer an online interface. Various processes run there in the background and in the case of blockchain, it is an option that is stronger and more long-term or even eternal. This makes it unbeatable in this role compared to other concepts. This is why every museum must consider how cultural heritage and cultural assets can be preserved and presented in the blockchain. This is a new level that has not yet been reached in terms of intensity in recent years. A process of rethinking is now beginning there again and the Museum Saar has now carried this out as a case study in order to get used to this process. The focus was on things such as color fastness, brilliance and that it really corresponds to the original. When you realize during the process that this works even in such large dimensions, the idea naturally arises that this is the central way to make objects last indefinitely. A transformation process is now underway here; it needs to be clarified how this can be regulated legally, as well as in terms of accessibility and control for the individual buildings. Development in this area is still in its infancy, but will continue. However, the most important step, "the start", has already been taken.
More exciting projects at NIFTEENIFTEE will continue to follow the path with NFT projects. It was always very important for them to show what is possible with the technology right from the start. She also finds it very exciting to work with a museum. If you look at Ukraine, for example, where there is a risk that some of the country's cultural assets will be destroyed, blockchain can be used there as a strategy to really preserve the cultural assets so that they can continue to be preserved independently of the country. As sad as this may sound, the approach is the right one. Just as museums have to come up with a metaverse strategy, i.e. a strategy for using the Web 3 for their own purposes, the same applies to entire regions. For example, NIFTEE also has a cooperation with the Ahr Valley. There was a terrible flood disaster in the Ahr valley last year and this flood disaster is now being documented. A memorial is being erected as a work of art and the company has developed a strategy together with the Ahr Valley, which will start implementation next week. There will be tokenized flood wines, as well as digitalized works of art, about which no more can be revealed at this point. Flood wine, for those who don't know, is one of the biggest marketing campaigns for all winegrowers in the Ahr Valley, whose bottles ended up in the water during the flood and thus became unsaleable. Now it has become an insane project in itself, which has now been digitized.
It is important for the process to simply take the first step instead of spending weeks or months looking for problems. These can often be resolved during the ongoing process.
The potential of museumsMuseums have enormous potential. Museums are more difficult to bring into the general consciousness, partly due to corona, but also overall. This means that people often don't even think of visiting a museum in their free time at the moment. That's why museums have to create occasions to attract visitors. The project with NIFTEE is such an occasion to raise awareness of the Museum Saar and the work behind it. Good work is often done that is not even seen by many people. NFTs also make other target groups aware of museums and a whole new interest is awakened. However, it is fundamentally important for all museums that both analog and digital never compete with each other and that they enrich each other. If this statute is firmly established in people's minds, then a lot can develop.
The good cause of the projectThe money generated by the sale of the NFTs is used to support a good cause. Specifically: the museum's support association. For years, the association has been running a project that enables school classes from all over Saarland to visit the museum with support. This project is now being relaunched and French school classes, who would not be able to travel to the museum without support, are also to be supported. The proceeds from the project can be used to
This will make an important contribution to inviting some school classes to the museum and enabling personal development there.
Pure NFT museums? The future of museumsMuseums continue to evolve. Even the Museum Saar already offers the option of walking through the museum in 3D. We are increasingly hearing about the first pure NFT museums opening at different locations. These purely digital museums will definitely play a major role in the future. We are still at the very beginning of what will one day be called Metaverse. This is emerging bit by bit and NFTs are also building blocks of this. The way we deal with objects and digital goods, as well as our own culture, is currently changing radically. It is becoming possible to view things worldwide without actually being there. NFTs can be used to clearly assign cultural assets to a region, an artist and a museum. These are very special advantages, as the topic of war and looted art is still coming up again and again today. Furthermore, the question of whether the document is an original or a forgery can be clearly answered. The blockchain will definitely make a contribution in this respect and offers clear solutions for the future. All of the developments that are happening now in this direction will contribute to this and play a part in determining what the overall picture will look like in the end. This opportunity is also seen in the collaboration between NIFTEE and the Saar Museum, which is another reason why it is really great that this is now happening in the Saar region. In Germany, we are now at the forefront of this.
The vision of the blockchainThe blockchain is a showcase. A showcase that creates occasions and focuses on things that were not yet known in the museum context and to which no access would otherwise have been found. This showcase can ultimately lead to people starting to visit other places, opening up their perspective and their view of the world and wanting to create experiences elsewhere. The blockchain is an extension of what already exists and specifies, concretizes and brings the offer closer and thus represents an optimal increase that builds on what already exists.
Advice and success factorsIt can be difficult to break new ground, especially with topics that are far removed from the industry, such as the combination of NFT and museum, as is the case in our example. Simon Matzerath and Carmelo Lo Porto conclude with their advice and success factors for such a process for all strategy makers in museums.
Advice from Simon Matzerath Sometimes it's difficult for museums, but it's always good if you don't first do "the chair circle" and think about what problems could arise. Basically, you should react to real situations. This means opening up, breaking new ground, taking these paths and then gathering and adapting experience. You have to preserve and live out the experimental. It's not a bad thing if the tenth experiment goes wrong, because then you've done nine things that have all helped you move forward.
Advice from CarmeloLo PortoOnthe one hand, it is important for museums to open up to new opportunities. However, it is also important that people who may not come from the field and have little to do with culture or contemporary culture open up to it. Carmelo himself has also learned an incredible amount about art and the conservation of art during the collaboration in recent weeks. There are exciting worlds out there. So: go to the museums and take a look.