Belvedere Museum in Vienna will offer Gustav Klimt's legendary painting "The Kiss," one of the world's most famous romantic artworks, to collectors as digital excerpts, namely as nonfungible tokens (NFTs).
Ahead of Valentine's Day, the museum has announced that it will begin selling digital romance in the form of 10,000 NFTs of Klimt's "The Kiss," each costing around 1,850 euros ($2,060).
Hyped by some and dismissed as a money-making scheme by others after NFT artworks fetched millions at auction, these so-called nonfungible tokens are digital certificates of authenticity meant to prove this is the original, even if countless other digital copies of Klimt's artwork still exist.
With this project, Belverede is tapping into a new source of income, a spokesperson said of the campaign, which could bring in a total of up to 18.5 million euros.
The museum said buyers can register for a chance to pay and "own a fraction of the digitalized image" and use these registrations as "a digital declaration of love" on Valentine's Day (Feb. 14).
The Belvedere Museum's project is only the latest in a string of high-profile NFT sales following a boom in this new technology. Proponents say that even though there can be any number of identical copies of a work of art or object, only one NFT can be considered the original.
The authenticity of the files in most current NFTs is secured with the tamper-proof blockchain data chain of the cryptocurrency Ethereum.
"The conversion of digital reproductions into virtual originals opens up new forms of participation that, in financial terms, should be taken seriously, yet can also be viewed playfully," said Belvedere Director General Stella Rollig.
