For an artist who started the NFT boom in 2021, it took Beeple a minute to enter a museum’s collection. But finally, the wait is over.
The Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Artte Contemporanea in Italy hosted the first NFT in its permanent collection, a racy work created and donated by Beeple. Title FTX Board Meeting, Day #5676 13.11.2022 (2023), the work exists as both a 1/1 NFT and an oil painting, and depicts, in Beeple’s hyperrealistic style, an imaginary day in the server room of the crypto-exchange. bankrupt currency FTX.
“Beeple’s work,” museum director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev said in a statement, “is a significant gift that updates our permanent collection with artwork in a 21st-century medium that combines the digital and the physical.” .
She added that the work paints “a strong image”, which is an understatement. The piece depicts several versions of FTX frontman Sam Bankman-Fried engaging in sexual relations with each other, a solipsistic orgy that nods to rumors of sexual alliances between FTX staffers. An artist note on the NFT reads “cluster certified by the board”.
Mike Winkelmann (Beeple) FTX BOARD MEETING, DAY #5676 13.11.2022 (2023). Courtesy of Château de Rivoli.
According to the museum, the image had to be censored in order to be shared on the Castello di Rivoli YouTube channel.
“Beeple’s seemingly pornographic image also points to the childish, immature and narcissistic nature of the digital world,” Christov-Bakargiev said. “He questions the technology and the society that develops in relation to this technology, even as he uses its system and its structures.”
The gift follows Castello di Rivoli Exhibition 2022 by Beeple A human (2021), the world premiere of the artist’s video sculpture, who later traveled to M+ in Hong Kong.
Castello di Rivoli is the latest museum to add NFTs to its permanent holdings following the crypto market depression. THE Buffalo AKG Museum of Art And LACMA in the United States acquired significant collections of NFTs, while earlier this year the Centre Pompidou becomes the first French national museum to acquire chain art.
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