Ukrainian Art Museum to preserve art and cultural heritage through NFT auction

As the Web3 space expands, nonfungible token (NFT) use cases continue to evolve beyond the hyped days of stagnant digital art collections. But even within the field of art, the NFT tool is being reinvented, as is the case with a Ukrainian art museum.

Kharkiv Art Museum announced on October 13 that the Art without Borders NFT collection is now available on the Binance NFT market.

Art Without Borders includes 15 artworks from the museum’s collection, with proceeds going to fund the museum and “save Ukraine’s cultural heritage,” as the official announcement states.

The museum is one of the oldest in Ukraine, with almost 25,000 works of art by artists from Ukraine and around the world. Artworks by Albrecht Dürer, Georg Jacob Johann van Os, Ivan Aivazovsky, Simon de Vlieger and others are featured in the NFT collection.

Binance NFT Manager Lisa He told Cointelegraph that in a time of conflict, when donors are looking for a safe and secure way to provide funds, NFTs offer reassurance:

“[NFTs] offer safety and security for donors because all transactions are recorded on blockchain technology. All donations to causes via NFTs are tracked and cannot be changed or deleted.”

The Binance CEO went on to say that the transparency of the blockchain also allows donors to know when and if the funds reached their intended destination.

Related: Museums in the Metaverse: How Web3 Technology Can Help Historic Sites

Museums have used NFTs as a means of digitizing art in the past, such as the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, which tokenized a piece in its collection worth millions of euros.

Art has even been NFT-ized in metaverse museums, like when Frida Khalo’s family brought a never-before-seen piece from their private collection to Decentraland.

Meanwhile, the city of Kharkiv has been subject to intense fighting in the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Therefore, the usefulness of this collection can preserve culture that is currently in danger of being destroyed, as was the case in the infamous looting of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad in 2003.

Lisa He says that the combination of “emerging NFT technology and the long-standing Ukrainian cultural heritage in NFT will support the reconstruction of culture and history in real life”.

NFTs have already been used as an aid and resistance act in Ukraine during these turbulent times. Proceeds from an NFT auction were used to help restore physical monuments that have been damaged during the conflict.

The Ministry of Digital Transformation in Ukraine even launched its own digital NFT museum in order to document and preserve a timeline of major events in the conflict.

Lisa He said that Binance will continue to support NFT projects that create practical and scalable solutions for various social problems, “including the preservation of Ukraine’s cultural heritage.”