As announced on LACMA UNFRAMED, ECHOES, a Virtual Exhibition from the LACMA Art + Tech Lab, EPOCH Gallery, and UNCOPIED was released as a NFT. ECHOES – featuring American Artist | Lukas Avendaño, EYIBRA (Abraham Brody), NNUX (Ana Lopez), and Oswaldo Erreve | Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork and Rhett LaRue | Lawrence Lek | Jen Liu | Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello | Sarah Rara “ECHOES,” 1/5 was already acquired by a collector, and its smart contract was triggered to pay all artists involved in the collective artwork.

NFTs present challenges for collectors beyond the logistics of ownership and exchange, but also in terms of long-term sustainability and authorship of these artworks. Questions arise as to what stake various blockchain technologies have in guaranteeing that these unique assets have a life beyond the immediate, and questions around the transmutability of these assets onto other blockchain systems remain murky. For this installment of NFTs and the Museum, LACMA Digital Preservation Manager Joey Heinen interviewed Elian Carsenat, computer scientist and founder of UNCOPIED, an authentication system for digital artworks (including NFTs).

Object in inventory n°1990/2572-Dog-Est-B.Toro, Dogon votive statue (detail), anonymous, pre-20th century, 32x11x9 cm, © Richard A. Pierron, Galerie Sirius African Art, Mali, West-Africa. This October 2021, Uncopied was used for the first time to authenticate a secure Certificate of Inventory (CoI) for a physical work of inestimable cultural and heritage value. The object 1990/2572-Dog-Est-B.Toro is a votive statuette from the Dogon Country estimated to have been created in the first half of the 19th century or earlier.