Art galleries and museum exhibitions for decades around the world have enabled cultural education, social interaction, and moments of visual awe.

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, Georgia O’Keeffe’s Black Iris III, and Picasso’s Crying Woman have inspired generations of art lovers to pursue their own purpose, creativity, or other goals.

But since the turn of the century – severely affected by seismic changes in digital behavior, economic uncertainties and nagging complaints about exclusivity – art exhibitions have appeared in galleries society Breathtaking.

An article by Arts Professional in late 2017 showed a drop in visitor numbers to London’s most iconic art attractions, a devastating paradox given the record number of tourists visiting the city that year.

After the pandemic fell victim to the convergence between humans and the physical environment last year, this calamity can only be taken broader.

Despite this, an emerging art form that is rapidly becoming mainstream and could promise an industry-wide resurgence. And of course this art form is unusable tokens (NFTs).

Based on the principles of decentralization, provenance and spatial autonomy, this community can become an important driving force behind the next generation of the performing arts.

These creations live in a world where pixelated art, virtual frames, fancy things and loners are considered the norm and punks are as valued as Picassos.

Born in 2017, Crypto Punks has pioneered NFT culture and has broken into the mainstream to represent modern symbols of status and social respect.

At the heart of the iconography of the internet, these groundbreaking avatars have now inspired the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Cool Cats, among others.

NFT emerged at a time when the boundaries between our physical and digital world were blurred. A debate that is often raised is whether art belongs in physical galleries, on online displays, or even in virtual supermarkets. A conversation that will evolve every day as new opinions and ideas shape the cultural landscape.

NFT space has seen parabolic growth in the past twelve months. Leading NFT marketplace OpenSea recorded a whopping $ 4 billion in trading volume in August 2020 and is said to have hosted 98% of the entire market’s trades with just 37 employees.

NFT has attracted numerous corporate giants including Visa, Nike and the NBA, as well as global sports stars Tom Brady, Steph Curry and Lionel Messi. At last week’s Met Gala, a punk pin was even featured on the outfit of Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.

With this new appreciation for artistic expression and enthusiasm for the potential of the medium, art galleries and museums seeking innovation may find themselves on the cusp of innovation.

Cointelegraph spoke to Elio D’Anna, the founder of HOFA – a London-based gallery with a rich history of cryptocurrency – to discuss the cultural implications of inviting non-traditional art into traditional space.

The fact that artists work with digital media to create images, renderings and art with computer graphics really opens up a whole new level of our feelings, art and the world.

The gallery, in partnership with Studio37, will be opening a public storefront in the coming weeks to display $ 64 million worth of NFT artwork, including six of the 24 extremely rare CryptoPunks. The pieces are printed as 41 x 41 cm lithographs and signed by John Watkinson, co-founder of Larva Labs.

In addition to printing – stamped with red punk approval – the piece will contain a 12-word seed phrase that will give buyers access to an ERC-721 digital token.

From all of the recent cheers and cheers, one of the most significant acquisitions in the token market has failed to garner the same recognition from its esteemed contemporaries.

This is why it is so important to step into the room at the renowned Sotheby’s auction house. They were the first auction house to accept BTC and ETH payments in May and continue to facilitate NFT events like the sale of the World Wide Web source code.

Recently, Sotheby’s held a sales collection of 101 Bored Apes and six mutant serums for $ 24.39 million, a value that exceeded all expectations of the night.

During our chat, HOFA gallery founder D’Anna also commented on the selection of Punk, Ape and Fidenza NFT in the exhibition and why the selection of ‘blue chip’ works is important.

They are a historical creation of unique works that will be talked about for years to come. Owning one of the first collectibles from this new NFT world is rare and one of the reasons people are so interested in collecting them.

The exhibition “Portrait of an Era” will be accessible in person, online via the HOFA mobile app and via virtual reality.

Virtual and advanced technologies are designed to provide audiences with a unique, three-dimensional experience in multiple areas of visual entertainment.

The Crypto Art Museum is a general gallery opening in April 2020 in the Somnium Space on the Ethereum blockchain. It shows a large collection of encrypted works of art that museum connoisseurs acquired as impregnable tokens.

The museum ranks 20th on Cointelegraph’s 2020 annual list of the most influential figures in crypto and blockchain, and launched a native token on Polygon this May to promote space governance.

At the end of our transition, D’Anna shared her thoughts on the rise of the metaverse and the potential impact on art galleries and museums around the world.

I think we should always be open-minded and that’s why I’m very interested in all the new creations and expressions from the art world. There will be super products, but I still believe that physical art will always have a very special place in any collection.

The exhibition Portrait of an NFT Era will be on public display from September 23rd to October 7th at the HOFA Gallery in Mayfair, London. Registration is open and free.