New collaboration: Art and Antiquities Blockchain Consortium

February 15, 2024

Another means of ensuring that both digital and physical cultural material remains accessible and traceable is blockchain technology. Factum Foundation is collaborating with theĀ Art and Antiquities Blockchain Consortium, run by Susan de Menil, and the Lam Museum of Anthropology at Wake Forest University to combine blockchain code with 3D scans of artworks and artefacts, beginning with a collection of looted Bura terracotta sculptures that the Lam is in the process of repatriating to the Ministry of Culture in Niger.

Whether in developing countries that have been subject to political instability such as Niger, or in UK museums that have been targeted by thieves over a long period of time, digitisation is an effective means of dissuading looting through enabling future authentication, in which blockchain can provide an unalterable record of the movement of the objects.