Dmitri Ozerkov, the head of the contemporary art department at State Hermitage Museum, has decided to embrace the NFT culture. As it is being postulated, soon every museum around the world would be creating their own digital copy in the metaverse, a philosophy that Ozerkov stands firmly behind.
Precisely why he has been currently developing the Celestial Hermitage, a digital version of the pristine Russian museum which would soon be exhibiting nonfungible art. In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, Ozerkov mentioned that everyone was moving into the digital era, and it was time that nothing lagged behind.
Russian Museum Introduces NFTs
The State Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, Russia, is the largest museum in the whole world with a gallery space that contains close to 3 million pieces of art. In September, the museum decided to move towards the NFT world by selling five digital imprints of the most famous masterpieces in its collections in the form of tokens which raised a huge sum of $450,000. In November, the museum went on to launch its first-ever digital exhibition, which was titled the Ethereal Aether, where 38 tokens were showcased.
Now, with a division dedicated to cultivating NFTs, visitors have been allowed to interact with the tokens that are on display. Previously, visitors would only be able to look at the physical works on display. Ozerkov stated that in the physical museum, one could pass through the doors without touching any piece. But with the tokens, one could easily interact, or play with them.
Ozerkov is quick to point out that the interest of the museum towards NFTs is geared less towards market dynamics, and more towards investigating the artistic value that the tokens would be able to bring into contemporary art.
