The non-profit arm of Tezos blockchain has announced that it will invest £1 million to create an endless assortment of non-fungible token (NFT) artwork minted on its platform to be known as The Tezos Foundation Permanent Collection.
The Tezos Foundation launched the £1m fund to collect NFTs by African and Asian artists. This collection will be curated and initially managed by British photographer Misan Harriman who is the first black man to shoot a British Vogue cover.
Misan hopes to use his experience as the chairman of the Southbank Center in London to help showcase digital art by emerging artists from the underrepresented regions of Africa and Asia in the NFT community. Southbank Center is Europe’s largest center for arts and it attracted over 4 million visitors in 2019.
As the first curator of the collection, Harriman says he wants to show the world exceptional work from different voices within the crypto art community.
“The Tezos Foundation Permanent Collection will support and celebrate a new generation of artists that have chosen a smart contract-enabled path to be their true selves,” he says. “We will be the custodian for this new community of creatives.”
The Tezos Foundation was established in 2017, one year before the Tezos network went live. The Tezos network serves as an open supply blockchain to power smart contracts but in the last year, Tezos has made a name for itself in the art world.
In December 2021, Tezos hosted an interactive art exhibition at Art Basel Miami where visitors could mint NFTs in collaboration with the German digital artist Mario Klingemann. This year’s Art Basel events in Hong Kong, Miami, and Switzerland will use Tezos as the official blockchain.
NFTs make international art show debut
As crypto markets continue to plummet to levels lower than the flash crash of May 2021, Tezos believes that the launch of the Permanent Collection can help give a boost and break down barriers created by restrictive laws on cryptocurrencies in the emerging markets of Africa and Asia.
Tezos co-founder and early architect, Arthur Breitman commented enthusiastically about the launch saying,
“We’re thrilled to introduce this collection as a way to celebrate and garner additional awareness for artists of the Web3 world. This project, in collaboration with Misan Harriman’s talent and expertise, allows us to create a bespoke destination with the sole purpose of elevating digital artists who turn to Tezos for a sustainable way of sharing their work with the world.”
The Permanent Art Collection celebrates the artists pushing boundaries in the NFT category and aims to increase awareness of blockchain technology across the art world by empowering the institutions and artists building on Tezos.
Tezos hopes to develop and empower a community of artists to help each other navigate the new Web3 space to increase adoption and show more use cases that can consequently help positively affect crypto regulation in Africa and Asia.