French museum Musée d’Orsay is set to showcase non-fungible token (NFT) artworks by DJ Sébastian Devaud, also known as Agoria, in its upcoming exhibition, “Le Code d’Orsay.”
The exhibition will feature two artworks, “Ʃ (Sigma) Lumina” and “The Painter’s Studio,” centered around “biological generative art,” which involves creating artworks using algorithms, artificial intelligence, and data from “the living world.”
The first artwork, “Ʃ (Sigma) Lumina,” a collaborative effort by Agoria and artist Johan Lescure, features a sculpture whose shadow forms a QR code on the ground. The code grants access to digital works that visitors can shape using their breath. By scanning the QR code and blowing on their phone’s microphone, visitors uniquely transform the digital art, which they can then mint as an NFT on the Tezos blockchain.
In order to further captivate visitors, Agoria and Johan Lescure will create additional original works inspired by those generated by visitors. These works will be sold, with a portion of the profits donated to the museum.
The second artwork involves Agoria collaborating with scientists to create a unique, digital interpretation of Gustave Courbet’s “Painter’s Workshop” using Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a type of yeast. This experiment explores themes of memory and transmission by simulating historical events from Courbet’s life through yeast breeding conditions.
The exhibition is scheduled to run from February 13 to March 10, 2024.
This isn’t the first time Musée d’Orsay has ventured into the Web3 space. In September, the museum partnered with the Tezos-based KERU platform to launch exclusive NFT souvenirs tied to its Van Gogh exhibition.
Across the art world, museums are embracing NFTs as a new form of artistic expression. For instance, in October 2023, the Norman Rockwell Museum introduced the “Studio Sessions” NFT collection, preserving the artist’s legacy digitally. Similarly, in January 2023, the Orlando Museum of Art showcased “Twentysomethings,” an exhibition featuring works from Fabio Sandoval’s private NFT collection.
