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Shihan Fang · · 4 min readNational Gallery Singapore dabbles in blockchain and NFTs
Nestled comfortably in his chair outside the lift lobby on the sixth floor of the Conrad Centennial hotel in Singapore is 85-year-old Goh Beng Kwan – he’s half asleep.
Photo credit: 123rf
The celebrated octogenarian has had a long day posing for pictures at his solo exhibition, GBK85, which celebrates his life’s work as one of Singapore’s pioneer artists. The art show occupies the entire floor of the hotel.
When the 20-something tour guide arrives, she reminds us, the visitors, to download the ArtAF app to experience the augmented reality portion of the exhibition. Four of Goh’s paintings have been digitized and animated, giving the artwork a new lease on life in the virtual realm.
Goh’s youngest daughter, Hazeleen, who is also the founder of ArtAF, points out that the four animated works have also been minted as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Nifty Gateway, an NFT marketplace.
Transitioning a physical artwork to a digital file and now an NFT, the Goh family is certainly keeping up with the times. And helping to drive that transformation is one of Singapore’s national art museums, the National Gallery.
Keeping art relevant
“At the end of the day, the everyday citizen isn’t going to just connect with art at face value, unless [they] already have a personal interest in history or art history,” says Kevin Lim, deputy director of digital innovation and transformation at the National Gallery.
“What we’re trying to do is create relevance – being relevant to everyday society via popular culture or the ideas [conveyed through] art about how I am living my life today.”
Housed in a stately colonial-era building that was formerly the Supreme Court, the National Gallery is host to one of the world’s largest collections of Southeast Asian art.
Goh Beng Kwan’s NFT on Nifty Gateway / Photo credit: Tech in Asia
It is also home to Y-Lab, a startup incubator that aims to foster technology innovations that can eventually be implemented at the museum.
One of the projects in the program is AWSt (also known as ArtWallStreet), a platform that enables people with little or no coding experience to deploy an ecommerce portal to sell or distribute NFTs.
The National Gallery and AWSt are planning a joint exhibit later this year that includes an NFT vending machine located within the museum premises. Visitors can experience the artwork in person before minting an NFT of it.
Overhauling art patronage
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The museum is also planning to launch a DAO next year. But dealing with public perception will be tricky.
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