Berlin In his adopted home of Florence he is known as a “Direttore Pop”, in the museum scene he sometimes enjoys the reputation of an “enfant terrible”. Born in Freiburg, Eike Schmidt (53) has headed the Uffizi in Florence, one of the most famous museums in the world, since 2015. In normal years it is visited by over four million people, most of them tourists. With a social media initiative on Instagram, among others, and the TikTok video platform, which is particularly popular with young people, Schmidt managed to make the museum attractive to young people as well. He landed the most sensational coup this spring when the Uffizi had an NFT (Non Fungible Token) made of Michelangelo’s circular painting of the Holy Family, the so-called “Doni-Tondo”, and sold it for 140,000 euros.
Are expensive JPGs a sustainable business model?
Eike Schmidt: It depends for whom. When we think of reproductions and secondary image rights, then conditionally. When we think of artistic works that are specially created for the digital, of course the limitation and authentication through the blockchain offer opportunities to finally make them collectable, tradable and also loanable. This has already resulted in sustainable business models for individual artists and galleries.
Aren’t you arguing against Michelangelo’s Doni-Tondo, for which the Uffizi has just published a 9-edition NFT at a price of 140,000 euros each?
No, because I believe we have a source of income here that fills an additional niche. Just as no museum has ever been able to finance itself from the sale of postcards or plaster casts, it is just as impossible to imagine digital reproductions as one of the main sources of income today. This is a special segment that has its customers and prospects. But since it is something reproductive and not something newly created, there are always the cheap versions for those who actually only want the image and not any associated rights or exclusivity.
This spring, the Uffizi had an NFT (Non Fungible Token) of Michelangelo’s round picture of the Holy Family, the so-called “Doni-Tondo” (left), made and sold for 140,000 euros.
(Photo: Uffizi Gallery)
What do you think of models in which blockchain-based minority shares in physical works of art are also sold from museums and can then be linked to participatory elements? Examples would be a dinner under the picture or special tours or participation in exhibitions. Is that an option for you?
Yes, I think that’s an interesting possibility, but then – as always in such cases – it really depends on who has the most original idea and who has it first. Everything here, especially participatory rights, has yet to be defined. For comparison: If you hold shares, then you have a share of the vote and then you need a particularly large number of shares in order to have a real say. Otherwise the right to vote is completely superfluous; most shareholders get none of it. It is the same with the digital reproduction of an image. If it belongs to a hundred people, certain rights related to the use of the original physical work could well be attached to it. But if it belongs to 4,000 or 400,000 people, it would be unthinkable to bring all these owners together for a dinner in front of the original picture.
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That would be impractical at all.
I think that such models have largely symbolic value and can also find concrete applications, for example in the area of friends and sponsorships of museums. Above all, you have to have an original usage suggestion, because that can be freely defined and everything can in principle be combined with everything. It’s a question of marketing. But it is also conceivable that apart from your share you get no further-reaching rights at all, except the right to sell your own share, to bequeath it, and perhaps also options to act on it.
Is it worthwhile using digital presentations – in whatever form – to relieve tourist-overrun cities such as Florence or Venice?
It doesn’t work at all. From experience I can say that exactly the opposite happens. In the very rare cases in which a purely digital exhibition makes money and attracts an audience, there is always a desire to see the originals. The same goes for the web and social media. It is already foreseeable that the Metaverse will further intensify the longing for the original. The more present a work is in the digital world, the greater the demand for the physical original. What Walter Benjamin assumed – in relation to photography – has only partially come true. The aura of a digitally reproduced work of art does not shrink, it certainly does not dissipate completely: The aura grows through digitization. Benjamin was absolutely right, however, that this would lead to democratization. So the more image copies we have, the less time and place they are, the easier they are for everyone to access in any way. Indeed, this leads to democratization. But it does not lead to de-auratisation.
Are NFTs also conceivable or planned in the official exhibitions, i.e. also in dialogue with the existing ones?
Sure, although we have to be aware that if the original is an algorithm, only a partial visualization of the work can be offered in an exhibition. This is just as unsatisfactory as the astonishingly primitive platforms that still dominate the digital art trade today. Especially when we think of the juxtaposition of genuinely digital works of art with historical, i.e. actually physical works, rooms and collections, I bet that the much more interesting dialogues will very soon not take place in museums or galleries, but in the metaverse .
Mr. Schmidt, thank you for the interview.
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