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The NFT Factory was the first museum dedicated to crypto art in France, and it was opened by collectors.
Benoit Couty and his wife Thuy-Tien Vo were brought up on a diet of classical art in the form of paintings, literature, and museum trips; nevertheless, at the age of 50, they stumbled upon NFT and began advocating for digital art.
MoCA is France’s first “crypto-art” museum, and its address is this string of characters. It first welcomed customers in 2018. It is accessible only through the internet, and contains some 800 works. The two artists hope to promote what they call “committed” digital art by doing so, so named because it harkens back to the early internet’s emphasis on openness and freedom.
This “crypto-art,” he argues, is distinct from other forms of digital art because of its focus on eternal concerns like man and machine, the afterlife, and the Renaissance.
Benoit Couty is not only the curator of an online NFT gallery, but he also helped found a physical gallery near the Centre Pompidou in Paris with a hundred other NFT enthusiasts. On Saturday, a new gallery and workspace named the “NFT Factory” debuted, where workshops and seminars will be held. Since his previous NFT purchase was “a land in the metaverse,” this is a novel experience for him. Back then, some thought that the Internet’s future lay in these kinds of digital universes.
The first NFTs were created by artist Pascal Boyart, who had previously made NFTs of his murals. His mural “Liberty Leading the People in Yellow Vests” was a take on a painting by Eugene Delacroix. “I wanted to present their works in a major museum, so I named it the Crypto Art Museum. Their paintings had such energy and spontaneity.”
“The works ranged in price from 10 euros to 100 euros at the beginning of 2019. They range in value from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of euros “More than that, he adds.
Conversely, Thuy-Tien Vo claims that she “was a spectator for a long time before leaping into the Rabbit Hole,” as the French refer to the undiscovered realm in another reality (a nod to “Alice in Wonderland”).
For the duration of MoCA’s three-year run, which concludes in 2021, the pair displayed on screens in the former Pierre Cardin museum 50 pieces from the museum’s permanent collection and 30 works made specifically for this occasion.
“As someone whose parents were collectors, I believe crypto-art will remain popular long after the NFT craze has passed. We can see that, similar to earlier art historical movements, such as pop art, it results in rejections but also collaborations and imitations “says she.
