Our (museum) eyes are focused on the future

The Finnish National Gallery took its first baby steps into the metaverse with the opening of the Finnish Metagallery pavilion in Decentraland on 4 October 2022. When we made this news public some weeks back, the first question we got was "Why?"  

It is an excellent question – even more so, if you are a fan of Simon Sinek's Golden Circle model. He suggests that successful companies contemplate the why more than the how and the what.  

Here are my thoughts on these key questions:  

Why? Knowledge and experience  

The Finnish Metagallery is our first venture into the new virtual world running on blockchain technology. This is a pilot project that will continue to the end of 2022. Our aim is to understand if art interests Decentraland visitors and if they engage in the provided activities (changing artworks and voting for next set of artworks). Will they visit once or time and again? We will also gain deeper insight and analysis on visitor behaviour, like how many visit, how long do they stay and how much do they interact on in the pavilion. We will get help in analysing the data from a study conducted Pasi Karppinen (PhD, Oulu University, OASIS research unit ) and his fellow researchers.   

Why now? Venture capital investments into Web 3.0 and the blockchain technology it runs on is a steady flow of billions. According to McKinsey, some 32,4 billion US dollars were invested into web 3.0 in 2021 and a further 18 billion US dollars in January–June 2022  

I think it is wise to start preparing for this shift in technology. 

One of the key tasks for the Finnish National Gallery is to make sure that art is accessible and available to as widely as possible. We have three museums that welcome 600 000 to 800 000 visitors annually. We are not about to construct a fourth museum. Not in the physical realm, anyway.  

How? In collaboration 

This project has been made possible by the close and energetic collaboration between the Finnish National Gallery, the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra and the Decentraland Foundation. The Adventure Club team in Amsterdam and Helsinki created and coded the pavilion.   

Sitra is looking to find the gaps in the Finnish legislation and suggesting changes to it, so that both economically viable and operationally functional projects for web 3.0 could be established in Finland. Decentraland's Museum District has provided the virtual land for free for a set time, so that this project could be created quickly, efficiently and on a tight budget. The Adventure Club team has done the magic that can be seen in Decentraland. For our part, we at the Finnish National Gallery seek to find new ways to use our collections to the benefit of the public. We're also looking for new revenue streams to support this work.   

What? Art and engagement in virtual space   

The Finnish Metagallery pavilion in Decentraland is a digital version of the Finnish pavilion at the 1900 Paris World Fair. It seemed like a fitting setting for a time-bound project. The physical pavilion was built to last for seven months at the expo – and was demolished once the expo ended. So we lost the beautiful frescoes in the cupola of the pavilion, painted on-site by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, one of the most renowned Finnish artists of all time. The sketches for the works remain a part of the Finnish National Gallery’s collections.        

In the Finnish Metagallery, you can see some of the works that were present in the Paris pavilion. These include works by Väinö Blomstedt, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Albert Edelfelt, Magnus Enckell, Albert Gebhard and Pekka Halonen. In the spirit of equality, we wanted to showcase artworks by Finnish women artists from the same era: Fanny Churberg, Elin Danielson-Gambogi, Amélie Lundahl, Helene Schjerfbeck, Venny Soldan-Brofeldt, Beda Stjernschantz, Helena Westermarck and Maria Wiik. 

As you visit the Finnish Metagallery, you can switch between these two sets of artworks.

You may even start a text or voice discussion with other avatars in the same space. Just open the chat box on the lower left hand corner of the screen and choose text or audio and start communicating. 

What's next?  

The Finnish Metagallery is a pilot project. We wanted to do something tangible to learn more about being active on a blockchain. While we wait for the analysis on the pilot – which will be published in early 2023 – we are planning for our next web 3.0 projects. One thing is for sure – we will not be doing them alone and we will be sharing the story as it develops. Stay tuned.