BY SELOME HAILU
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures announced that artists Nikolai and Simon Haas will issue limited-edition NFTs to benefit the museum’s access, education and programming initiatives. The NFTs will be available via an OpenSea auction from Oct. 20-25.
The NFT design is inspired by the Academy Museum Pillar Award, which was also created by the Haas brothers. The annual award honors philanthropists who support the museum, and was given to Academy Museum chairs Bob Iger, Annette Bening and Tom Hanks at the museum’s Opening Gala on Sept. 25.
The NFTs are moving renderings of the Pillar Award combined with quotes from film industry leaders sourced from The Future of Cinema, which is the exit gallery in the museum’s three-floor core exhibition Stories of Cinema. Each quote is minted in five different colors. The first grouping to be issued, comprising of five NFTS, will feature a Whoopi Goldberg quote: “The future of cinema is in your hands now.” Other editions will feature quotes from Howard Berger, Effie T. Brown, Sid Ganis and R.J. Kizer.
“We are thrilled to be working with Niki and Simon Haas on both the Pillar Award and on our first NFTs,” said Bill Kramer, director and president of the museum. Their work brilliantly embodies the optimism, beauty and bold storytelling found at the Academy Museum. The Haas Brothers are dynamically envisioning our gallery, The Future of Cinema, in a new way — and supporting activities that are vital to our own future as an institution — by reimagining the Pillar Award in the forward-looking medium of NFTs.”
“Designing the Pillar Award represented an opportunity to pay homage to the film industry’s rich history and express our reverence for an art form which continues to change the world,” said the Haas brothers. “Film as a medium is, at its core, fiercely experimental. We have looked to film as a touchstone for our own practice, holding its embrace of new media and experimentation as a guiding principle for artmaking. We are proud to carry this ethos into the newest medium of all, NFTs, with a digital Pillar Award whose existence is a testament to the power of curiosity and the relentless pursuit of storytelling. We are proud to collaborate with the Academy Museum on this opportunity.”
