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Tech Accelerator Helps Museums Use Blockchain to Stay Relevant
Last week, a group of 10 major museums, including Crystal bridges The Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, the Swiss National Museum in Zurich and the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico have presented a series of blockchain projects through Web3 Laboratory for Arts and Culture (WAC)..
During the live streaming demo on May 30, museums presented projects aimed at establishing new types of relationships with visitors, from innovative fundraising models to live “minting” experiences. The goal, according to the organization, is to help museums “engage younger, tech-savvy audiences, secure funding, and stay relevant in a rapidly digitizing world.”
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WAC Lab was launched in 2021 by the France-based non-governmental organization We are museums with the aim of educating cultural institutions Web3 and turning them into “emerging technology pioneers”. It is supported by Tezos Foundationthe non-profit branch of the Tezos blockchain, which has long been the art world’s blockchain of choice due to its engagement with the industry and lower environmental impact.
“It is obvious that museums must adapt to new models and challenges, and change dramatically to do so,” Diane Drubay, founder of We are museums and WAC Lab, they told ARTnews. “One of the main challenges is the speed with which they have to adapt, but if they manage to do this, these museums will become relevant for the current generation and even more so for future generations.”
The WAC Lab program includes a six-week fellowship that trains museum professionals to be Web3 experts and a regular online discussion for arts staff themselves, WAC Weekly, on using blockchain technology. There is also a month-long accelerator program, now in its third season, which helps institutions build blockchain projects they launch. Projects are based on a variety of funding models, from institutional funding to self-produced budgets.
Each season of WAC Lab focuses on a particular theme; Past ones have covered fundraising, NFTs and acquisitions. The most recent season, which ran from April 22 to May 19, took “the creative application of blockchain even further by fusing museum culture with blockchain culture… to reveal the potential of decentralized governance and new types of programs loyalty,” Drubay said.
20 institutions were selected for this season’s scholarship, while 10 large museums participated in the accelerator. Each accelerator participant was paired with one of seven participating technology companies to help them conceive and implement their project.
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, for example, has partnered with digital agency Broken Egg, which helps brands and businesses leverage Web3. Together, they have developed an immersive experience for an upcoming experimental space at the museum that will guide visitors through the woodworking processes of various contemporary artists in the museum’s permanent collection.
Kim Lý, an interactive media producer at the museum, said in a statement that the museum hopes projects like the one developed through WAC Lab will increase the museum’s exhibition capacity by 50%.
“For us, this interactive project is an exciting and foundational moment for our institution’s long-term digital strategy,” he said.
Nimi, a Web3 tech startup that partners with cultural institutions to create digital artwork collectibles, has partnered with three institutions using Web3 to cultivate a younger, more engaged cohort of patrons. Nimi CEO and founder Anh Nguyen told ARTnews that the company’s strategy with WAC Lab participants was to “leverage token-based engagement strategies to bring gamification and loyalty and reward models to enable the younger audiences to have more ownership and agency in the future of the arts.”
For example, Nimi collaborated with the Goethe-Institut Lisbon in Portugal to develop a system where people earn membership tokens and accumulate various benefits through attendance. For 221A, an arts and culture space in Vancouver, BC, which includes a library and artist accommodation, they helped develop a token-based library card.
NextMuseum.IO landing page. Screenshot/NextMuseum.io
Nimi has also worked with the German Museum Ulm, on nextmuseum.io, an online digital platform for the collaborative curation of exhibition projects. Nextmuseum.io was launched in 2020, with funding from the German Federal Cultural Foundation; Nimi helped develop the platform’s engagement model and create a system to push stakeholders “to take action, contribute and develop ownership.” Museum Ulm’s last hope for the accelerator was to transform nextmuseum.io into a DAO, or decentralized autonomous organization, in which participants have a say in the decision-making and direction of the platform’s projects. Typically, DAOs are funded by issuing governance tokens, which holders then use to vote; nextmuseum.io’s system will grant tokens to interested parties who interact with the platform.
“For example, you can earn a token by posting an open invitation, joining the discussion by commenting, attending an event or writing to nextmuseum.io on social media,” Ulm Museum digital curator Marina Nething told ARTnews. “A certain number of tokens will grant the holder access to exclusive options and benefits. Technology is driving our museum into the future.”
Such strategies are sorely needed in cultural institutions, Nguyen said, as the average age of members reaches the 60s or 70s, while millennials and Generation Z remain uninterested.
“Despite the steady number of visitors, younger audiences are less engaged,” Nguyen said of today’s museums. “Fewer become members and support museums in the short, medium and long term.”
A relationship by the International Council of Museums assessing the impact of Covid on cultural institutions found that the pandemic has changed “museums’ perception of the digital world forever”.
“Although the resulting economic crisis will obviously constitute a major obstacle in terms of economic and human resources that museums will be able to invest, more and more institutions are now aware of the fundamental importance of digitalisation,” reads the report.
WAC’s Drubay similarly described museums as currently undergoing an “identity crisis” in a post-pandemic world. The crisis has pushed museums to be “fearless,” he said, in “taking big, bold steps” toward Web3 in contrast to their slow and timid engagement with social media and Web 2.0.
At the end of the WAC Lab’s demonstration day, Drubay said, “both through their creativity and their audacity, the projects developed for this season show how cultural institutions are willing to think outside the box when it comes to Web3.”