"R122/97 / Sylt, Bl. 5", 1997
The Schlieker Haus minted from one of the five prints in the Sylt series – print 4, edition 3/5 – a high resolution NFT, or „Non-Fungible Token“. Ten copies of the NFT, which was minted as an edition of 50, are now available for sale on the NFT platform OpenSea.
Why would one do this?
The idea of the Hans-Jürgen Schlieker NFT Collection is to celebrate the centenary of the artist. It was minted by the Schlieker House in Bochum, a not-for-profit exhibition space and official representative of the artist’s estate.
Proceeds from the sale are meant to support the space and further research on Schlieker’s legacy and the post-war German abstract movement more broadly.
Has this been done before?
During the peak of the NFT trend several collections and museums created NFTs (non-fungible tokens) of their physical artworks, offering digital representations for sale or inclusion in their collections.
For instance, the Belvedere Museum in Vienna worked in 2022 with an NFT investment fund to release a limited edition of 10,000 NFTs, each representing a unique digital excerpt of Gustav Klimt’s masterpiece „The Kiss“. The initiative aimed to democratize access to the artwork and explore new revenue streams.
Of course, minting NFTs from physical artworks of deceased artists is not uncontroversial:
- Should this be done at all?
- Would the artist himself had supported the idea?
- What ethical considerations should be made?
- What creative opportunities might emerge?
- What are meaningful ways to promote the collection?