It’s debatable to say that art galleries started centuries ago in caves, where people used to carve petroglyphs in walls.
That for some of them used to be language and not something to exhibit to others, which is one of the sole purposes of a contemporary art gallery. It is art itself to beautifully curate a room, place each piece of art in its spot in a way, that invites visitors into their worlds.
“The primary purpose of the Museum is to help people enjoy, understand, and use the visual arts of our time.“
– Alfred H. Barr, Jr.
It is considered that the Kunstmuseum Basel in Basel, Switzerland is the museum with the oldest public art collection, the so called Amerbach Cabinet. When the University of Basel and the city Basel purchased the collection together in 1661 from Basel’s local printing family, they received 9,000 books along with the largest collection of Hans Holbein’s paintings. And since then, not much in the sense of how galleries and museums operate has changed. People attend those to admire the art and, in some cases, potentially to buy it, as they started to do some 200 to 500 years ago. Since then, artists were no longer seen as just some people projecting the core of their creativity into a certain material for someone else. They could embrace the market and sell their works through art galleries. Nowadays, art is changing with the help of technology. We see artists claiming the rights for their NFTs and selling those within seconds through the internet, something our ancestors couldn’t probably have even imagined. And whilst NFTs are heavily tech-based, how do they tie in with in-person art galleries?
Physical NFT Art Gallery
NFTs are usually minted on different blockchains like Ethereum and Tezos and offered on marketplaces like OpenSea and Binance. Though anyone can download the piece of art itself as a PNG file for example, only the buyer/owner, has proof of ownership over the piece itself. When NFTs are so easily accessible over the internet, through any device with internet connection as well, why should they be shown in a physical gallery?
Two scenarios: First, imagine yourself sat at your desk, with OpenSea opened in your browser, you are presented with over hundred collections of NFTs from different artists. The overwhelming amount of content and information you face immediately might make it easy to just click the X and close your laptop.
On the other hand, you could be opening the door to a spacious gallery in London or New Yok, welcomed by a suited staff. Next thing you know, you are holding a glass of champagne and are looking at frames with digital moving pictures in them. You walk around the gallery, observing each frame, reading about it in your own pace. People greet you and cannot wait to outbid you for those NFTs. Exactly that feeling of luxurious and comfortable NFT browsing has opened doors for an NFT Gallery in NYC and an NFT Gallery in Chicago amongst other locations.
You have probably heard of the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. The Vatican Museum in Rome, Italy. Or the British Museum in London, UK. These are some of the most visited art museums in the world. What about that NFT gallery that we mentioned earlier? Which cities have those and what are they known as?
Superchief Gallery
Edward Zipco and Bill Dunleavy founded the Superchief Gallery in 2012. Through a gallery in Brooklyn, NY and Sunday BBQs, they gathered a community of what they describe as underground artists which could hence connect with each other. In 2016, Superchief opened its first digital-art gallery in Soho, NY. But in 2021, they introduced the world’s first physical NFT gallery in New York. The Superchief Gallery NFT focused on introducing Superchief’s members from the past to the NFT world and simultaneously introduced new digital artists. These curated the collection Season 1 Starter Pack, which generated more than $1 mill. in sales in less than nine months.
Bright Moments Gallery
Bright Moments Gallery was founded in Venice, California as a group of volunteers but has since grown into an international organization. The idea behind the Bright Moments NFT Gallery is to eventually have a collection of 10,000 NFTs called CryptoCitizens. They are so far launched in Venice Beach, New York, Berlin, London and Mexico City. Each city has a set of 1,000 NFTs of generative portraits of locals in blocks distinguishing themselves by having specific to the location backgrounds and accessories. Along these locations, CryptoCitizens is also featured in a Galaxy setting with aliens. Each city also has a gallery featuring these 1,000 NFTs. But along featuring their collection, Bright Moments also wants to educate people on NFTs and how to create and mint them. Their galleries around the world involve the works of numerous artists and introduce people to their world.
Art Basel Gallery
Art Basel was founded by Ernst Beyeler, Trudl Bruckner and Balz Hilt in Basel, Switzerland. The idea behind this project was to create an international art fair. With locations in Basel, Miami Beach, Hong Kong and most recently Paris, Art Basel is one of the biggest art fairs in the world. The latest installments of the fair in late 2022 will feature over 250 galleries with more than 4,000 artists from all over the world. At Art Basel’s 2021 fair in Switzerland, a Berlin-based gallery called Nagel Draxler, introduced an NFT Kiosk, making that the first NFT involvement at the international fair. At the December 2022 Miami Beach Art Basel event, German artist Quasimondo, or known to offline humans as Mario Klingemann, is introducing a unique experience, where attendees will be able to mint their own NFT by having their portrait taken.
Virtual NFT Galleries
If you are not the type to dress up, go to a gallery, drink champagne and discuss NFT in a physical frame with strangers, viewing a virtual NFT gallery might just be your thing instead. Yes, the number of visuals on your screen might be slightly overwhelming, but this way you can sit back and enjoy browsing through all those NFTs in your virtual gallery. You can still enjoy a glass of champagne this way, channel that gallery energy to you!
Learning the controls of an online NFT art gallery shouldn’t be hard for the average PC user and will allow you to go around the exhibitions and explore art, zooming in and out of it. Or, if you have tried to create some NFTs yourself or want to in the future and are wondering how to organize your own virtual gallery, we’ll lead the way.
VR Gallery – Where You Can Enjoy Digital Art
The metaverse is a playable virtual reality, accessed through Virtual Reality headsets. Though many of the current VR NFT galleries are accessible with just a basic laptop. This is where a lot of people can set their NFT galleries for other players to explore. One of the best examples for those is Decentraland. A 3D Virtual world, Decentraland offers users to play games, exchange collectibles, buy and/or sell digital real estate and socialize with other players. How virtual galleries tie in here, however, is through, well, virtual galleries. Sotheby’s is the world’s oldest auction house, a proclaimed NFT trader and seller of the first ever NFT Quantum. They are one of the many creators of an NFT art gallery in Decentraland. The gallery is an exact replica of the New Bond Street Galleries of Sotheby’s in London, with five NFT galleries on the ground floor.
Creating Gallery to Display Your Own Art
Submerge yourself in art and you might get inspired to create some too. If you yourself are thinking on minting your own NFTs and want to have a personal NFT gallery, there are several ways to do that. As we mentioned above, Decentraland is a place for everyone to explore, figure out and spread the word about their work. Another site worth mentioning is Spatial. A very well-known and often mentioned in the online NFT VR community, Spatial is a platform offering the creation of virtual meeting rooms. These are often used for experimental projects from users but nowadays, also mostly for online NFT galleries. The benefits of researching how and where to mint and showcase your one-of-a-kind NFT can be life changing. Many people fight over gallery spaces, print out business cards and what not to get their name out there. Imagine the comfort of being able to copy-paste a link to your online NFT gallery and be done with it. Maybe whilst enjoying that champagne?
Future Development of NFT Galleries
For the past couple of years, NFTs have been growing in reputation and investment opportunity for buyers and artists themselves. Any NFT virtual art gallery development could only be beneficial to those. This will help them to push their work to the public and profit from that. There are already museums out there who start to invest in NFT making. Or as we mentioned previously, galleries opening for explicitly NFT art.
“NFT artwork more closely resembles a moving painting than a traditional work of video work, which has been missed by the more conservative art world. Artists and curators are starved for wall space to showcase their works and voices that the NFT gallery is uniquely positioned to handle.”
– Marc Billings, founder of Blackdove
There’s a thin line between what NFT currently resemble and what they will evolve in. There is no one to say what NFT galleries will be in the future either, but these two things go hand in hand. If one of them is created in a new and contemporary way, the other will follow and adapt. And the future looks like it holds many interesting developments in the world of NFT art and virtual art galleries.
