Tezos Foundation & HEK Basel Deepen Commitment to Blockchain Art With 2026 Partnership
As museums and cultural establishments proceed to grapple with how you can exhibit, protect, and contextualize digital-native artwork, the Tezos Basis and HEK (Home of Digital Arts) are leaning into the problem — collectively.
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The 2 organizations have introduced a year-long partnership working by 2026, targeted on advancing blockchain-based creative apply by exhibitions, schooling, and long-term preservation.
The collaboration builds on a relationship that dates again to 2022, when HEK publicly embraced Web3 and blockchain as instruments for increasing participation, possession, and sustainability in digital artwork.
Exhibitions Throughout Digital & Bodily Areas
Two curated exhibitions shall be introduced on HEK’s digital platform, digital.hek, showcasing artists working with digital and blockchain-based practices. Every exhibition will characteristic not less than six artists and embody onchain paintings releases in partnership with objkt, one of many main NFT platforms within the Tezos ecosystem.
This system additionally extends into the general public realm. Throughout Artwork Basel 2026, HEK will host an out of doors presentation at its Basel location, bringing blockchain-based artwork past institutional partitions and into shared civic house.
Three internationally acknowledged curators specializing in artwork and know-how will oversee the exhibitions, emphasizing experimentation and cross-disciplinary views.
“The collaboration with the Tezos Basis opens up new curatorial and technological potentialities for HEK. It permits us to discover experimental media artwork codecs that transcend institutional and spatial boundaries.”
Sabine Himmelsbach, Director of HEK
Schooling, Entry & Arms-On Studying
Past exhibitions, the partnership locations robust emphasis on public engagement and schooling.
HEK will set up an on-site kiosk at its Basel venue, enabling guests to discover the digital exhibitions and study blockchain-based artwork straight inside the museum house. In parallel, in-person workshops will introduce new audiences to NFTs, blockchain know-how, and digital possession by guided, hands-on experiences.
The purpose is demystification — making blockchain artwork accessible not simply to collectors and technologists, however to normal museum guests as nicely.
Preserving Digital Artwork for the Lengthy Time period
By means of HEK’s management of the Software program-based Artwork and Possession working group inside the EU COST Motion European Media and Born-Digital Artwork Conservation and Information Community (EMBARK), the collaboration will assist a world coaching college on NFT preservation.
This system shall be hosted at ZKM | Middle for Artwork and Media and produce collectively museum professionals, conservators, and researchers from throughout Europe to deal with certainly one of digital artwork’s most urgent challenges: how you can protect works which are native to software program, networks, and blockchains.
“Working with HEK helps our concentrate on long-term museum programming and blockchain schooling. This partnership is about constructing sturdy foundations for future generations of artists working with know-how.”
Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, Head of Artwork at Trilitech, Tezos’ R&D hub in London
A Broader Institutional Push for Blockchain Artwork
The HEK partnership reinforces Tezos Basis’s broader technique of supporting blockchain artwork inside established cultural establishments. Earlier collaborations embody initiatives with the Musée d’Orsay, Serpentine, and LAS Basis — all geared toward integrating blockchain into curatorial apply slightly than treating it as a parallel ecosystem.
