“The blockchain is a perfect record keeper of provenance. The way that the object moves on the blockchain between collectors, that record is indisputable.” Early this year the Presidential Committee on Ghana’s Museums and Cultural Heritage released a wide-rangingthe different avenues that could make repatriation more efficient. Though the research is in early stages, it did point to blockchain as a possible tool for keeping track of looted items.
The idea of an online inventory tracking the whereabouts and quantities of objects is not new, but it’s a process that’s been made difficult by the fact that Western museums do not keep detailed records of items such as human remains—aboutwere in Berlin in 2016—and have also been hesitant to make public what they have in storage. The latter point makes the process of creating an inventory and then safeguarding its legitimacy via an NFT difficult.
On the plus side, innovations in the digital museum space have been spurred along by the COVID-19 pandemic. Most museums around the world have had to offer exhibits via Zoom, at the very least. Bell’s Museum of Crypto Art, which at first glance looks like a Sims installation crossed with an interactive video game, was inspired by a trip he took to the open-airof contemporary art in Brazil. Bell told me he created MoCA after seeing “a lot of barren land in the virtual space...
While the tech space has opened up new avenues for engaging with museum visitors on a larger scale, Jones approaches the use of NFTs, and the ownership question, with varying levels of interest and caution. “I guess one of the open questions about this is the type of ownership that can be documented using NFTs,” he told me.