British Museum dives into NFTs

The British Museum has created more than 200 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of famous Japanese artist Hokusai’s work.

The art pieces – part of a partnership between the British Museum and the French NFT platform LaCollection – depict a range of Hokusai’s work.

The collection includes some of Hokusai’s most famous pieces such as Under the Wave off Kanagawa, popularly known as ‘The Great Wave’, Ejiri in Suruga Province, and Clear Day with a Southern Breeze.

The NFTs are digital images of the original Hokusai works, and coincide with the opening of the museum’s “Hokusai: The Great Picture of Everything” exhibition.

They come with different levels of rarity – ultra-rare (two images of one of Hokusai’s most famous works); super rare (ten images); limited (1,000 images) and common (10,000 images). Common images will sell for a fixed price of €400, while the others will be put up for auction.

LaCollection is a platform dedicated to the creation of NFTs for museum and institutional collections. Its partnership with the British Museum is the company’s first.

“It is an honour to partner with the British Museum,” the CEO and co-founder Jean-Sébastien Beaucamps said.

“LaCollection is born from two passions – art and technology.”

The British Museum licensing manager, Craig Bendle, added: “We are very excited to partner with LaCollection and explore innovative ways to engage with the growing NFT market.”

The NFT market exploded in value earlier this year when Mike Winkelmann, better known as the artist ‘Beeple’, sold a piece of art for around $69.3m.