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Founded in London in 1766, art auction house Christie’s is a symbol of yesteryear and yet the company appears to be on the cutting edge. In March, Christie’s sold a collage by the digital artist Mike Winklemann, better known as Beeple, for 42,329 Ether, at the time the cryptocurrency equivalent of $69.3 million.
The artwork was sold as a nonfungible token (NFT), a sort of certificate of authenticity minted on the ethereum blockchain.
The sale was part of a larger boom market for NFTs that peaked in February and March, which has somewhat subsided since. But Christie’s remains long on NFTs. The auction house has this year sold a series of Andy Warhol NFTs for a combined $3.3 million, a digital version of Banksy’s street art for $100,000, and a collection from the 18-year-old digital artist FEWOCiOUS for a combined $2.2 million. In short, Christie’s is embracing an emerging market, as is its counterpart Sotheby’s. So Quartz caught up with Noah Davis, Christie�
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Nine CryptoPunks at Christie s 21st-century evening sale on May 13, 2021. Courtesy of Christie s.
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NFTs have done one thing that unites disparate parts of the art market: make people rich. Sources said
Proceeds from the works will go towards supporting the annual funding of The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, where Warhol was born, as well as to help the foundation in supporting artists across the US. Christie’s said profits will only be donated “after any appropriate offsets for carbon emissions associated with the minting process”.
“We are grateful for this opportunity to work with Christie’s on making a significant contribution to the foundation’s ongoing efforts to support artists,” Michael Dayton Hermann of The Andy Warhol Foundation said in a statement. “Warhol’s innovative vision and practice continues to enable the foundation’s unwavering commitment to artists by supporting small, community-oriented spaces, major museums, and everything in between.”