AvoinGLAM arranged a discussion event on April 19 at 1 pm – 2.30 pm UTC. We discussed the relationship between Open Access to cultural heritage, monetization in museums and NFT technology. The discussion was moderated by Andrea Wallace and Douglas McCarthy.
The topic of the April OpenGLAM discussion was monetization in museums, ie the earnings that can be made from the museums’ data assets. Several museums have begun experimenting with blockchain technologies known from cryptocurrencies. NFT refers to unique digital objects associated with these technologies, and Web3 is a thought of internet based on blockchain technologies.
There are differing views on the impact of these technologies. Others say it is the inevitable virtual future and an earning opportunity for memory organizations struggling in financial difficulties, others recognize the possibility of Ponzi schemes or money laundering, and question the blockchain technology because of its environmental impact.
Andrea Wallace and Douglas McCarthy moderated the discussion on 19 April from 16:00 to 17:30 EEST.
Recording and notes
The recording can be found in AvoinGLAM’s YouTube channel ja notes in the memo. Follow updates in the Facebook event.
Discussion on social media
Recommended reads
Wikipedia Editors Have Voted Not to Classify NFTs as Art, Sparking Outrage in the Crypto Community. Artnet News, January 13, 2022
Larissa Borck and Medhavi Gandhi: Money, money, money. Dig It!, Feb 9, 2022.
Kate Brown: ‘We Reappropriated What Belongs to Us’: Congolese Artists Minted NFTs of a Colonial-Era Sculpture—and the Museum That Owns It Is Not Happy. Artnet News, February 22, 2022
Bernadine Bröcker Wieder, Douglas McCarthy: Should museums be dabbling in NFTs? Apollo Magazine, 25 October 2021
Anil Dash: NFTs Were Supposed to Protect Artists. They Don’t. The Atlantic, 2 April, 2021.
David Golumbia: Cryptocurrency Is Garbage. So Is Blockchain. Medium, 27 June, 2020.
Andres Guadamuz: The Treachery of Images: Non-fungible Tokens and Copyright. December 2021
Andres Guadamuz: Can copyright teach us anything about NFTs? TechnoLlama, March 2021
Douglas McCarthy: Museums and NFTs – a conflict of interest? douglasmccarthy.com, March 1, 2022. (Original interview in Swedish)
NFT GLAM survey (2022-) (alpha) Created by Douglas McCarthy, Feb 2022.
Foteini Valeonti, et al: Crypto Collectibles, Museum Funding and OpenGLAM: Challenges, Opportunities and the Potential of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). 24 October 2021
Glyn Moody: NFTs are mostly useless or worse, but here’s one important way they could help creators. Walled culture, 6 April 2022.
Tim O’Reilly: Why it’s too early to get excited about Web3. O’Reilly, December 13, 2021.
Michael Weinberg: Are NFTs Compatible with OpenGLAM? michaelweinberg.org, January 25, 2022
Web3 is going just great. Created by Molly White.
Molly White: Abuse on the blockchain. Guest lecture at Stanford university. Video.
Molly White: Blockchain-based systems are not what they say they are. Molly White, 9 January 2022.