The Binance NFT Marketplace is opening a new five-piece NFT collection from Russia’s State Hermitage Museum. The collection will feature NFT artwork by celebrated artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh, and Claude Monet.
Binance announced the auction would run beginning August 31 until September 2, 2021. The opening bids will start from 10,000 BUSD. The collection will also include digital recreations of the St. Petersburg-based museum’s masterpieces.
According to the press release, the collection will specifically include copies of Giorgione’s “Judith,” Vincent Van Gogh’s “Lilac Bush,” Wassily Kandinsky’s “Composition VI,” Claude Monet’s “Corner of the Garden at Montgeron” and Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Madonna and Child.” The museum will offer the five winning bidders an exclusive video showing the director certifying their copies.
Selected masterpieces of past eras
Mikhail Piotrovsky, the General Director of the State Hermitage Museum, will place his signature showing the exact time each signature is appended. The press release stated:
“The signature together with an ultra-high-resolution image, being digitized and tokenized, is a unique combination at the junction of the offline world, vividly illustrated by both the selected masterpieces of past eras and the personal autograph of the Director and the status of the State Hermitage, as well as the modern trend of digital art reflected in NFT tokens.”
NFT artworks and collectibles have fetched millions of dollars for their owners as 2021 trails the blaze as the year for non-fungible token (NFT) collectibles. So far, the most expensive NFT has been Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days that fetched a whopping $69.3 million. The other high-profile NFT sale was Cryptopunk#7523 that was sold for $11.8 million.
A new era in the evolution of the art market
The State Hermitage Museum’s decision to choose the NFT route is a wise one considering their position. The museum will replicate the cultural value of their centuries-old strokes of genius on the blockchain at a low cost. After that, they would sell them at a premium and still retain their physical copies.
The museum joins a growing list of cultural icons that have launched their NFT collections and generated high-status value. Recently, Marvel released a collection of over 60,000 digital superhero statues and sold them all within a day. The Hermitage Museum’s Director General added: “New technologies, particularly the blockchain, have ushered in a new era in the evolution of the art market, characterized by ownership and the assurance of that possession […] this is an essential moment in the development of the relationship between a person and money, a person and a thing.”
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