Sarah Meyohas’ ground-breaking Bitchcoin NFT enters Center Pompidou’s collection in landmark acquisition of digital works
In 2015, five months before the rise of Ethereum, Sarah Meyohas minted her first 200 Bitchcoins. The blockchain-verified tokens were intended to function as much art as digital currency, which collectors could hold, sell or trade for art by Meyohas – a conceptual transaction that linked the speculative value of cryptocurrency with the subjective value of art. The young artist (and Wharton Business School graduate) launched Bitchcoin at a gallery show where visitors could drop Bitchcoin for her photographic work, with a press release cheekily trumpeting, “Investing in Bitchcoin is investing in Meyohas.”
As sharp as it was, Bitchcoin might well have been a low-key conceptual endeavor if not for the sensation NFTs set off in 2020. Then again, amid the resurgence of historical blockchain-backed works, Meyoha’s name was rarely invoked in a rooms and a marketplace. dominated by top-selling male artists who are always online, such as Beeple.
Sarah Meyohas. Photo: Steve Benisty.
But no more. Last month, the Center Pompidou announced the acquisition of two Bitchcoins, joining 17 other NFTs being acquired by the institution in the first such acquisition ever by a French national museum. These other works include an Autoglyph, a CryptoPunk, new works by Jill Magid and Jonas Lund, and historical digital art by Robness and Fred Forest.
“It’s doubly exciting that my first museum acquisition could also be a historic one,” Meyohas told Artnet News. “I’m excited for each of the other 12 artists involved as well.”
The crypto artworks join the contemporary art museum’s significant collection of new media works, which Pompidou has been collecting since the 1970s. For curators Macella Lista and Philippe Bettinelli, who oversee the Pompidou’s NFT work, the acquisition is entirely in line with a museum dedicated to “addressing the innovation impulses,” they told Artnet News via email.
Larva Labs, CryptoPunk #110 (2017). Photo: © Larva Labs
– It is interesting to see how [this] Creativity started outside the art world, or from the specialized domain of digital art, before slowly re-emerging in the general landscape of contemporary art,” they said in a joint statement. “Artwork related to the blockchain moves many lines and provides a critical understanding of what is happening today.”
The museum plans to present the works as part of its permanent collection this spring (an online exhibition is also being played out for a later phase, possibly within “a specifically designed digital space”). This showcase will occupy the fourth floor of the Pompidou where crypto art will be framed as part of conceptual and minimal art traditions. As Lista and Bettinelli emphasized, “NFTs did not come ‘out of the blue.’
Agnieszka Kurant, Sentimentite-Mt Gox Hack (2022). Photo: Kunstgiesserei St Gallen AG, courtesy of the artist and Zien.
While the acquisition is heavy on new projects – everything from the conceptual, such as Agnieszka Kurants Sentimentite-Mt. Gox. Hack (2022), to the available, viz CryptoPunk #110donated as part of Yuga Labs’ Punks Legacy Project – pioneering NFTs are also represented.
Most prominently, it is John F. Simon Jr.’s Each icon (1997), Emilie Brout and Maxime Marion’s Nakamoto (The Proof) (2014), and of course Bitchcoin.
Sarah Meyohas, Bitchcoin #1,282 (2015 – 2021). Photo: © Sarah Meyohas, courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen.
In particular, the acquisition of Pompidou’s further nods to Meyohas’ 2017 project, Cloud of petals, which was backed by Bitchcoins. That year, the artist released reserved Bitchcoins on the occasion of her “Cloud of Petals” exhibition at Red Bull Arts in New York. There, the 3,291 symbols were linked to an equivalent number of physical rose petals, each carefully picked, photographed and fed into an AI dataset capable of generating even more images of petals. Holders can “burn” their Bitchcoin to claim their unique petal.
Again, the work explored the tension of linking a cryptocurrency to an entirely subjective view of beauty, although this time, implementing digital technologies to further examine what human labor might mean in an age of automation.
“Cloud of petals is a conceptual work that spans film, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, performance, computer science and photography, Meyohas said. “It’s fantastic to see this work enter the Center Pompidou’s collection alongside Bitchcoin, a project that proves blockchain-based work can encompass each of these and more.”
Sarah Meyohas, Cloud of petals (2017). Photo: © Sarah Meyohas, courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen.
With its two Bitchcoins, Pompidou intends to keep one symbol and replace the other with a preserved rose petal. For Lista and Bettinelli, the project stands as “a ground-breaking piece that touches the heart of what is at stake, which is the complete interconnection of symbolic, cultural and economic values.”
Although it has taken nearly a decade for her groundbreaking project to gain institutional recognition, Meyohas seems to have been content to let Bitchcoin’s footprint do the talking.
“Sometimes the projects that don’t tweet the loudest are the most thoughtful,” she said. “I am grateful that the curators at the Pompidou have the critical judgment to distinguish.”
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