The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) revealed today (13 February) a promised gift of 22 artworks minted on the blockchain—a collection that it says is the “first and largest” of its kind to enter an American art museum. The acquisition is courtesy of the collector who goes by the alias Cozomo de’ Medici and is allegedly the rapper Snoop Dogg, a longtime proponent of crypto and Web3.
Works by 13 artists from around the world make up the gift and purchase, and together tell a “representative history of the cryptoart movement”, according to the museum’s announcement. They include artificial intelligence (AI) art by Claire Silver; NFT (non-fungible token) photography by Justin Aversano; and the first major decentralised book minted to the Ethereum blockchain, Neil Strauss’s Survive All Apocalypses (2021). Lacma will also receive works by artists including Cai Guo-Qiang, the digital illustrator Yam Karkai, and John Watkinson and Matt Hall’s CryptoPunks—the popular pixel-art avatars that were among the earliest examples of NFT art.
Monica Rizzolli, Fragments of an…