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Join Amy Whitaker, blockchain and NFT researcher in the arts and Associate Professor at New York University, and Nora Burnett Abrams, our very own Mark G. Falcone Director of MCA Denver, at the Holiday Theater on Monday, April 17 to celebrate and discuss their new book, The Story of NFTs: Artists, Technology, and Democracy.
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, exploded into the art space last year, no doubt because Beeple (a digital artist) sold his NFT at Christie’s auction house for a staggering $69 million. Yet the story of NFTs is much more interesting, significant, and subtle than that sale. This book explains NFTs in the art world—and the ways they might not only democratize the arts but also enliven our larger democracy.
There will be a book signing and a chance to meet the authors after the conversation! Add a copy of The Story of NFTs: Artists, Technology, and Democracy to your ticket purchase at checkout and pick it up at the event. Copies will also be available to purchase in-person.
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About the Authors
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Amy Whitaker is a leading blockchain researcher in the arts and associate professor in visual arts administration at New York University’s Steinhardt School. Her research explores the frictions between art and markets and proposes pioneering systems of economic support for artists using fractional equity and blockchain. Her academic papers have appeared in major journals such as Management Science and the International Journal of Cultural Policy. Her work on Equity for Artists was a finalist in Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Competition. Her research has been cited in the Financial Times, Time Magazine, Fast Company, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Harper’s, and many others. She is the author of three books prior including Museum Legs, Art Thinking, and Economics of Visual Art. She has worked on blockchain as an advisor to the company Bitmark since 2014. Her profile of Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta, the researchers whose 1991 paper is cited in the Bitcoin white paper, was published in the Wall Street Journal. In 2022, she wrote a blockchain primer for the Art Basel Market Report.
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Nora Burnett Abrams is the Mark G. Falcone Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. Her career began in New York City at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Grey Art Gallery at NYU. Since arriving in Denver in 2010, she has organized over 40 exhibitions and authored or contributed to over a dozen accompanying publications. Recent projects highlighted unusual or unknown episodes in artists’ careers such as Basquiat Before Basquiat (2017), as well as the first survey of Senga Nengudi’s R.S.V.P. sculptures (2014). Her most recent projects included a retrospective of artist Tara Donovan (2018) and a focused presentation of never-before-seen photographs and ephemera by Francesca Woodman (2019). She has taught art history at New York University and lectured throughout the country on modern and contemporary art. She holds art history degrees from Stanford University (B.A.), Columbia University (M.A.), and a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.