The past and the future

Abstract

Tangible cultural heritage has recently been an important target for companies’ mining, minting or forging non-fungible tokens (NFTs). When encountering cultural goods collected in museums, the practice of NFTs needs to comply with national rules aimed at preserving and valorizing cultural heritage. NFTs are assets that could play different roles in museums. They might be considered as a tool for enhancing preservation or access to information on cultural goods, in particular when the latter cannot be displayed in the premises of museums. While no provision on preservation or access would be affected by the use of NFTs for such purposes, this chapter argues that these assets are way too expensive to be considered as an appropriate means for the said goals. On the contrary, NFTs remain one of the most recent tricks that bodies managing tangible cultural heritage, including artworks museums, use to collect funds. Thus, NFTs may be considered as a fund-raising tool, under the condition that the unique goal of the museum is to re-invest the collected money into initiatives fitting with its educational mission. In order to have a complete description of the scenario, it is worth referring to some national cultural heritage rules that favour fund-raising practices in museums; in some countries, these provisions may affect the ability of minting NFTs, even when they concern ancient artworks in the public domain.