What the Hell Happened: MetaRembrandt | Arts

The art world has long been criticized for its lack of accessibility and elitism. This has been true from the 18th century, when the British Museum required people to show identification proving they were of high society in order to see its exhibitions, to today, where museums offer memberships that give special privileges to the wealthy while displaying art from artists they have not compensated fairly. In response, art lovers and artists alike have proposed radical methods to make art more accessible.

Most recently, the Rembrandt Heritage Foundation and HODL Finance launched MetaRembrandt with the goal of making “Rembrandt’s oeuvre accessible and insightful for everyone.” Whether they have succeeded in that goal is up for debate. Through MetaRembrandt, the foundation has created an NFT collection of 8,000 pieces of Rembrandt’s famous painting “The Night Watch”, for sale on their website. For the price of 0.15 ethereum, which equates to $234.78 USD (as of October 29) plus a “gas fee” of 0.006 ethereum ($7.50 USD), anyone can acquire a virtual piece of the painting along with several exclusive benefits.

Owning a “Night Watch” NFT makes buyers a founding member of the MetaRembrandt Museum, giving them lifetime access to the collection. In addition, the 8,000 founders will be listed on the Wall of Fame in the MetaRebrandt Museum, be able to generate passive income by renting out their NFT, have access to the entire collection of Rembrandt’s oeuvre, gain access to “exclusive events in the MetaRebrandt Museum and real life,” and access the founders’ chat. The most striking of these privileges is the exclusive access to the MetaRembrandt Museum which is granted only to those who purchase the NFT.

The MetaRembrandt initiative is divided into 4 phases. Phase 1 involves the sale of the 8,000 NFT parts. In phase two, the Rembrandt Heritage Foundation will publish a new art book and send it to the 8,000 original founders of the MetaRembrandt Museum. In phase thr, the foundation will put together a virtual museum in Metaverse, which showcases Rembrandt’s work. In the fourth and final phase, all of Rembrandt’s artwork will be available, but only to the 8,000 people who purchased “Night Watch” NFTs.

For an initiative that supposedly champions accessibility, the word “exclusive” appears an alarming number of times on the MetaRembrandt website. Although some believes this initiative is essential to bringing art into the evolving digital realm, it is unclear how the Rembrandt Heritage Foundation intends to expand the accessibility of admission to their museum at such a high price, excluding many from the benefits they describe.

The price of a single NFT ($234.78) is nearly equal to the amount a federal minimum wage worker earns in a week ($290), making Rembrandt’s work inaccessible to the 1.1 million people who earn wages at or below the federal minimum. This price is also equal to a whopping 7.2 percent of the average American’s monthly disposable income, making access to MetaRembrandt a luxury that many cannot fit into their already tight budgets. Furthermore, MetaVerse itself is unavailable with the VR technology needed to view the virtual Rembrandt Museum, which can cost upwards of $400.

MetaRembrandt does not succeed in its goal of making Rembrandt’s work accessible to everyone. Obviously, that only widens access to Rembrandt’s artwork for wealthy members of society, who are often already able to pay for admission to museums that display Rembrandt’s paintings. Suspiciously, while the availability of the artwork does not increase, the profits to the Rembrandt Heritage Foundation and HODL Finance do.

MetaRembrandt thus brings the elitism of art curation to the virtual world by reinforcing the economic hierarchy that continues to plague the art world. Not only is the museum only accessible to those with higher incomes, the privileges that come with purchasing an NFT – such as a place on the museum’s wall of fame – create a sense of superiority among the exclusive “founding group”. While these wealthy few are able to rent out their NFTs at high prices to low-income people caught up in the NFT craze, the founders are able to reinforce their elite status by mingling with each other at the exclusive events of their NFT- ownership gives them invitations to. Such a system is very similar to the elitism for which earlier museums (such as the British Museum) and modern museums are criticized.

MetaRembrandt does not make Rembrandt’s artwork available to everyone; they practically preserve Rembrandt’s art, as well as the exclusive and elite attitudes surrounding it. Clearly, profit is the motivation behind the MetaRembrandt initiative, not expansion of availability. More discussion about the merits of practical art conservation is warranted, but that conversation cannot be about initiatives that prioritize profit and exclusivity over accessibility and artistic expression.