This week, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York has announced it is selling up to $70 million worth of traditional art to fund its efforts in the digital art market, including NFTs. The announcement is a stark reminder of the popularity of NFTs and their role in the future of art. Some artworks that will go on sale include works by Pablo Picasso and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
MoMA sells Picasso and Renoir to fund the NFT collection
The news confirms that MoMa is looking ahead to the future and sees its art collection expanding beyond the physical and into NFT art. Early estimates suggest that the collection of 29 contemporary art pieces will fetch around $70 million. The collection will go on auction at Sotheby’s this autumn.
Notable pieces up for sale include
- Francis Bacon, Three Studies for Portrait of Henrietta Moraes (1963)
- Pablo Picasso, Guitare sur une table (1919)
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Les Fraises (circa 1905)
- Joan Miró, Peinture (1949)
Glenn Lowry, MoMA director, stated, “We’re growing our digital audience, not losing any, so we realize we need to increase our capacity off-site and online.”
What NFTs will the Museum of Modern Art buy?
As usual, NFT Twitter is already making light of the MoMA decision. In fact, they are also making jokes about how they will decide which NFTs to buy. One user, @ben_zank, said, “MoMA plans to spend its 70m budget via ‘Drop your art, I’m collecting’ tweets.”
Finally, it will be interesting to see what NFTs make into the MoMA’s new digital art collection. Some of the most popular NFTs, such as CryptoPunks, BAYC, Ringers, Fidenza, Beeple, Squiggles, and XCOPY, will surely be under consideration.