The Enigmas of Blockchain Museography: Working papers

These papers encompass the speculations of three friends faced with imminent failure of art galleries, museums, and schools to transfer artist’s legacies benefitting a better world. The future of today’s young children to experience art, crafts, design, and intellectual heritage offered by artist is of main concern, asking, “In today’s world, how can senior artists’ legacies benefit education going forward?” Unwilling to leave the matter of artists’ asset management and legacy transfer to institutional gatekeepers and timeworn valuation systems, these papers take a fresh look at the brave new world of economic changes, art exchange, and sustainability. The story of these papers goes back years. Not long after Bitcoin came, every manner of blockchain-based schemes bloomed. In 2015 at its pre-launch, Bill Ritchie bought $10 in Bitcoin to play a digital card game. The game failed to launch. His Bitcoin was gone – or so he assumed. But in 2020 he discovered it had grown to $1,470! He saw his windfall as a “scholarship,” and reinvested it in learning how, if anything, crypto currency could work to finance a startup - his Printmaking Toys and Games open factory concept. Cryptography, for example, as the basis for blockchain technologies, was invented for business asset, product lifecycle, and intellectual property management in the 1990s. The dawn of the Internet and globalization demanded data security in a world of growing competition for Earth’s dwindling resources. In one generation, these technologies became widespread. In 2008, Bitcoin was invented, “to take financial control back from financial elites, giving ordinary people a chance to take part in a decentralized financial system.” Then came smart contracts, over-the-internet exchanges secured by algorithms and cast like iron into non-fungible blocks linked like a chain, thus, blockchain. To apply the system to works of art comprising artists’ legacies is far-fetched and novel. Most players abandoned the physical form of art and invested solely in digital art, also known as generative art. The NFT rush exploded in 2021 when a graphic artist merged five-years’ worth of his JPGs in one 316,939,910-byte file and it auction for $69.3 million. By 2022, NFT auctions became as common as physical items are on eBay. By the time these papers were being put to bed as a book on a shelf (and eBook, of course) NFTs for philanthropy became a new thing. Despite fluctuations in markets, recession, rising inflation, and government committees working to regulate the cryptocurrency industry, collectors and investors continue to play with crypto, the newest game in town. These papers are inconclusive but may serve to start conversations to help produce a method for artists’ friends, former students, and patrons’ heirs to repurpose their works and collections to be a great benefit to future generations. This is Bill’s hope – using his legacy to finance a Printmaking Toys and Games open factory startup, for example. Bill believes they will succeed through design and production of consumer products stemming from printmaking and designed for kids, parents, grandparents, and teachers. To Bill, a printmaking teacher his whole life, print is the ancestor of all science, technology, reading and literature, engineering, arts, mathematics, and music. Print be the “A” in the STEAM acronym. This new, enigmatic theory under discussion - blockchain museography - is the thread in these papers. In the days ahead, and just in time for today’s children who play-to-learn, they could, if Bill and his friends continue, grow interest among legacy artists seeking to use their holdings as investments in children’s futures.