The museum which has the largest collection of the paintings by Gustav Klimt celebrated the Valentine’s Day with its digital declaration of love.
Inspired by the most famous work “The Kiss” made by one of the Austrian painters Gustav Klimt, the Austrian Belvedere museum joined hands with the artèQ investment fund for launching a Non-fungible token (NFT) drop.
Offered as NFTs, a digital replica of the 20th-century depiction of a couple was divided into a 100-x-100 grid of ten thousand individual pieces offered on Valentine’s Day.
As mentioned on the collections website the estimated cost of one NFT was at 1,850 euros, on Feb 14 which was converted to 0.65 ETH, and the nominal total value of the NFT painting was suggested $21 million or 18.5 million euros. Although, only $103,900, or 33.3 ETH had been received at the time of publication, and more than 80% collection remained unsold.
The Belvedere’s “A digital declaration of love” NFT collection relatively low take-up suggested that at this point in the evolution of the market NFT purchasers are less interested in traditional art or the price of each piece was too high.
The painting was purchased for 25,000 crowns which are equivalent to $240,000 today, has been housed at Belvedere since 1908.
NFT certificates that were issued reveal that an individual dedication was included if the purchased painting’s digital part is presented as a gift for a loved one.
Managing director of the Belvedere Wolfgang Bergmann ahead of the drop told in a statement that, what marks these tokens as so treasured is the fact that each piece is unique and very little number of shares for the global market.
NanneDekking, CEO and Founder of Artory Inc., stated that such initiatives allow us to rethink art patronage entirely, which empowers museums to engage with a larger community, instead of being restricted to a small number of donors. She further added that the tokenization of art will ultimately enable a wider community of art lovers to reach the art market.
In Russia, the State Hermitage Museum has recently gone beyond digital reproduction and launched a digital exhibition with the metaverse style museum reconstruction.