Binance NFT to tokenize Leonardo-da-Vinci & Van Gogh’s artwork

Binance NFT platform has partnered with The Hermitage – one of the largest museums in the world, to tokenize artworks preserved at the museum. Binance announced yesterday that NFTs will be auctioned on its native marketplace at the end of August 2021. The collaborative NFT project is called, “Your token is kept in the Hermitage”, where the Hermitage will auction a collection of limited edition NFTs with digital copies of masterpieces.

Democratic & Accessible

The NFT collection consists of works such as Madonna Litta (Leonardo da Vinci), Judith (Giorgione), Lilac Bush (Vincent van Gogh), Composition VI (Wassily Kandinsky), Corner of the Garden at Montgeron (Claude Monet). By tokenizing some of the more profound artworks in the world, the Hermitage aims to provide exposure and accessibility, while highlighting the democratic and outward approach of the museum. The Hermitage emphasized the significance of digitization in the present.

Furthermore, the museum announced that each artwork will have two NFT copies. First, shall be stored in the Hermitage, while the second is to be auctioned. All proceeds from the sale will be transferred to The State Hermitage Museum.

Maintaining Uniqueness

To preserve the uniqueness of these artworks, all digital copies will be personally signed by Mikhail Piotrovsky. Additionally, the director of the Hermitage has created an independent work by applying his signature, date, and exact time of signing, to auction one-of-a-kind versions of the masterpieces. The place of signing, the Hermitage building itself, is also saved in the metadata.

“New technologies, in particular blockchain, have opened a new chapter in the development of the art market, led by the ownership and the guarantee of this ownership…This is an important stage in the development of the relationship between person and money, person and thing.”, – said the General Director of the Hermitage Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky.

The NFT market is booming having amassed $2.5 billion in sales in the first two quarters of 2021. Major crypto exchanges including the likes of Binance, Huobi, and several others have launched their respective NFT marketplace in the wake of its soaring popularity.