Cryptocurrency and NFTs get the last word in a new art exhibition at Oxford’s Ashmolean, Britain’s first public museum, founded in the 1670s.
The museum’s exhibition ‘Money Talks: Art, Society and Power’ is about “the use of art as a lens for the social history of money, but also about how art and money come together in different ways,” explains curator Dr. Shailendra Bhandare out.
It’s fitting, then, that the exhibition concludes with examples of how digital assets are reshaping the intersection of art and money, with an exhibition showcasing NFTs, including CryptoPunks and Rare Pepes.
“I just couldn’t skip this,” Bhandare said, “because when you talk about how money talks, how art and money come together, you have to include this somehow.”
CryptoPunks and Rare Pepes. Image: decrypt
NFTs, Bhandare said, are a “very important step in what is being talked about as a financialization of art,” noting the new feature of royalties in the secondary market and adding that he is keen to understand how “this new medium is artists are embraced. .”
“I must admit that this was the hardest thing for me to understand,” he said. “After an hour of talking to these artists, I put my head in. I had to drink coffee afterwards because it was really hard to disconnect from our normal world and end up in this metaworld all the time.”
César Escudero Andaluz and Martín Nadal’s ‘Economy, Knowledge and Surveillance in the Era of the Cryptocene.’ Image: decrypt
That, he joked, is why he chose “a work of art that contains many definitions.” ‘Economy, Knowledge and Surveillance in the Age of the Cryptocene’ by César Escudero Andaluz and Martín Nadal is a densely packed work of art that ‘illustrates the privatization of information in the digital age’, complete with references to Bitcoin, EthereumSatoshi Nakamoto and Vitalik Buterin, among many others.
The text-heavy work functions effectively as an encapsulated history of the decentralization movement—a piece of cake through Creative Commons, the cypherpunks, proof-of-work, Silk Road, and smart contracts.
Of course, as Bhandare noted, “It’s not all pretty,” with many artists speaking out against crypto and NFTs. On that side of the fence is Alexander C. Cornelius’ exhibition ‘In Cryptography We Trust’, which satirizes Bitcoin through the character of Monopoly’s rich uncle Pennybags.
Money “begins as art”
Of course, crypto is just the end point of an extensive exhibition about the history of art and money.
The exhibition begins with a one-two punch of Andy Warhol’s 1981 ‘Dollar Sign’ and LN Tallur’s sculpture ‘Unicode’ and transitions into an exploration of how money ‘begins as art’, Bhandare explains.
Janvier reducing machine. Image: decrypt
The works of art that adorn coins and banknotes are translated into mass-produced objects – helpfully illustrated by a Janvier reduction machine that translates oversized coin designs into the steel dies used to strike coins, alongside unused patterns for a planned range of ‘modern’ coin designs in the short time. -lived the reign of Edward VIII.
Elsewhere, exhibitions explore the Eastern traditions of calligraphy, used in place of representational artwork on coins and banknotes, alongside banknote designs by artists such as Gustav Klimt.
The source of all evil?
An extensive space is devoted to various artistic depictions of money around the world. “In Western art, money is usually depicted with its negativities,” Bhandare said, with money being “the root of all evil.” In the Eastern tradition, he said, “it’s all about the nice aspects of money – positivity, marriages, baby-making, fertility, abundance, that kind of thing.”
An exhibition about money seen through the lens of colonialism touches on topics that will be dear to the hearts of crypto enthusiasts, highlighting the dangers of inflation in Zimbabwe and using money as a “symbolic medium to challenge European interference in the African to draw attention to politics and economics.”
Mansour Ciss Kanassy’s ‘Afro Money’. Image: decrypt
That thread comes to a head with Mansour Ciss Kanassy’s “Afro Money,” an imaginary currency “circulating in a utopian United States of Africa,” which has also been made available as a cryptocurrency.
Elsewhere, artworks using money as a medium highlight themes such as the gender pay gap and the power of celebrity. Particularly interesting is Justine Smith’s 2009 ‘money card’ artwork ‘A Bigger Bang’, a response to the 2008 global financial crisis that inspired Satoshi Nakamoto to create Bitcoin.
Justine Smith’s ‘The Bigger Bang’. Image: Haupt Collection
It all culminates in the “Futurist” section of the exhibition, which “explores all those aspects where the boundaries between art and money become very fluid,” Bhandare said – such as generative AI NFT artwork “artifacts,” by Ana Maria Caballero and Alex Estorick, who coined Ashmolean’s own Oxford Crown coin to “challenge the traditional formulas by which culture is encoded”.
‘Art is money. Money is art,” Bhandare said – and appropriately enough, visitors exit the exhibition through the gift shop, where postcards from CryptoPunks and Rare Pepes can be purchased for a reasonable amount each.
Money Talks: Art, Society and Power’ is on view at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford from 9 August 2024 to 5 January 2025.