It’s no secret that art museums have seen better days. The U.S. Museum attendance was in stagnation as far back 2001. This trend has continued in recent years. In 2016, total visitors to art museums across Britain’s leading museums and galleries fell to just under 50 million—a 20 percent drop from the peak of 63 million in 1992.
In the wake of covid-19 restrictions, the world’s busiest art museums saw the most significant drop set at 77%, from 203 million worldwide in 2019 to a paltry 54 million in 2020.
And it’s not just attendance that’s down. As government funding for culture and arts has decreased over the years, private donors have changed their priorities and shifted their philanthropic focus.
Federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts has dropped by over 60% in the United States since it reached its peak in 1992. Also, state funding for arts has dropped sharply by 27 percent between 2008 and 2008. Many museums are now forced to cut back on staff, programming, and exhibitions. Some even sell artworks.
In other regions of the globe, it is worse. Between 2010 and 2015, the United Kingdom’s government funding for arts was cut by 30 percent. In Australia, the arts funding was cut by over $10 million.
This has put a lot of pressure on museums to look for new revenue streams. But in a time of declining attendance and diminishing government support, that’s easier said than done.
NFT-Based ART: The Rising tide
The NFT market is experiencing explosive growth, rising from less than $12 million in 2020 to over $80 million at the end 2020. In 2021, NFT sales grew even faster, reaching $5 billion in just two months.
The NFT market is said to have been cooling over the past months but trading NFTs rose 200x at the end 2021 and reached $17 billion.
Art has been one of the fastest to profit from the NFT hype. Many auction houses were quick to sell NFTs that represented simple artworks, for millions of dollars without any exchange. Online-only auction houses have conquered the world of NFT art, with examples including Christie’s sale of Beeple’s NFT artwork for $69 million, making it the most expensive digital work ever sold.
A new generation of cryptocurrency art platforms has emerged specifically for NFT trading due to the increasing popularity of NFTs. Rarible and SuperRare are three of these platforms, each with a high level of activity.
The Solution: MIDA’s Token Economy
NFTs have the advantage of being able to trade and sell online. The rise in popularity of new online markets for NFTs has resulted in the creation of an entirely online market. Museums and art institutions can take a cue from this digital age and create their own NFTs to increase their revenue and gain traction in the emerging digital economy.
MIDA is an excellent platform to link museums and art institutions using the most secure and efficient digitization methods.
MIDA, a web3 decentralized company that partners with European Art Institutions, brings a new stream of revenue to art museums via its token economy. Thanks to MIDA, art museums can mint unique NFTs out of authenticated art pieces, creating a parallel metaverse-ready art market.
Using $MIDA (the platform’s utility token), users can help fund museums and art institutions that suffer from a lack of funding and even give creators and emerging artists better visibility.
MIDA ($MIDA) Tokenomics
With a total supply of 100 million $MIDA tokens, a whopping 20% is allocated for the platform’s development, showing how the team behind MIDA is highly committed to the project’s success.
The tokenomics is also fair, with an 18% allocation to the platform’s liquidity pool.
Participants in liquidity farming will earn APY and receive exclusive NFT artworks as airdrops.
In addition, the platform comes with a social token called STENDHAL(SDH) that is used to show appreciation on creators’ NFTs on the social layer of MIDA. While SDH doesn’t have any economic value, it will help buyers gauge the popularity of the NFTs and measure engagement.
Conclusion
NFT markets are still young, so there’s a lot of uncertainty about the future. It is clear that our way of buying and selling art is changing and the Art Institutions must adjust to this digital world.
MIDA offers the best solution to art museums and other institutions for minting NFTs. Additionally, it creates new revenue streams for an already established market.
The advantages MIDA provides and the world-renowned masterpieces it contains, make the team behind this project optimistic about widespread acceptance. They plan to release tokens every 48 months.