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This article introduces the author's digital democratization practice at the National Gallery Liverpool and the myths behind the practice. On the one hand, digital technology has given more visitors the opportunity to access exhibits online. On the other hand, has the participation of digital technology really changed the traditional power relationship between museums and exhibits, and between visitors and exhibits? The data storage problem caused by decentralization and how to redistribute the ownership of exhibits seem to be the next question that needs to be answered in the museum's digital democratization practice.
Frances Liddell is thinking about how cultural institutions can become more attractive using NFTs and blockchain technology.
Provenance: JMW Turner, Criccieth Castle, North Wales, c.1836, Bequest of Robert Wylie Lloyd, courtesy of the LaCollection and the Trustees of the British Museum.
According to the data, digital technology provides an opportunity to democratize cultural heritage and museum collections. The idea of Web2 - around the concept of openness and participation - also promotes this idea and encourages cultural institutions to make their collections accessible online. Therefore, digital technology expands the accessibility of collections.
Poststructuralist thought has driven paradigm shifts in Western museum practice, and these paradigm shifts have promoted notions of museum democratization. Terms such as Eilean Hooper-Greenhill’s “post-museum” have helped foster an image of museums as fluid entities. In the “post-museum,” collections are structured by the museum’s diverse relationships with different communities and cultures. This highlights another form of democratization, where institutions break down monolithic interpretations of artifacts and instead explore different levels of understanding that communicate different perspectives through objects.
Digital technologies offer the means to implement this process of democratization by enabling digital collections to be understood as a way of capturing these different relationships and exploring new avenues of engagement. These means may take the form of digital storytelling, such as the Museums Connect project between the Samoa Museum and the American Museum of Natural History, or digital exchange and discussion, such as the Talking Objects Collective offered by the British Museum.
JMW Turner, The Colosseum, Rome, 1820, Bequest of Robert Wylie Lloyd, courtesy of LaCollection and the Trustees of the British Museum.
Web3 may also provide an interesting perspective for the discussion on democratization. NFTs in particular are rooted in the idea of decentralized ownership. When using NFTs, users often “regain” digital ownership in an economy that is often considered “post-ownership.” But does this idea of decentralized ownership have any constructive implications for museums’ democratization practices?
If “democratization” requires greater access to collectibles, digital technology may expand access to collectibles for different audiences. At the same time, NFTs, as something that can be owned, add value to this new form of digital access.
In the context of the ‘post-museum’, democratisation includes using digitisation as a tool to explore marginalised voices in the histories and cultures presented in collections, thereby ensuring wider representation. My PhD research with National Museums Liverpool (NML) combines these ideas, exploring how NFTs can be used in audience and community engagement practices by exploring different perspectives symbolised on collections. We worked with a group of participants to co-develop an online exhibition called ‘Crypto-Connections’ that explored our personal relationships with museum artefacts. As part of the project, NFTs of these objects were minted and gifted to each participant. In this process, NFTs act like personal versions of collectibles that can be owned forever.
My work at National Museums Liverpool is an experimental project. It considers the idea of using NFTs more broadly to engage in “shared authority,” or shared control over processes of meaning-making and interpretation. In my analysis, I found that this idea does have some merit, but that NFT ownership also reveals some underlying elements of power that often exist in museum collaborations.
JMW Turner, Johannesburg, 1817, courtesy of the Bequest of Robert Wylie Lloyd, LaCollection and the Trustees of the British Museum.
For example, the idea that NFTs represent personal perspectives gives these tokens personal meaning and value. In my conversations with participants, I found that some of them found this to be a valuable process. However, others questioned the future use value of NFTs. What is the meaning of owning this NFT other than the exhibition experience they represent?
This brings up the question of symbolism as a use value. NFTs run the risk of being influenced by "tokenism." This term is derived from the research of Sherry Arnstein. She uses the "ladder of participation" to explain the different levels of citizen participation in a project. This ladder has eight rungs, with "citizen control" at one end - participants have greater control over the project, and "non-participation" at the other end, where participants are deprived of their rights.
"Tokenism" is in the middle of the participation ladder. It describes a situation where participants have a voice, but they often "do not have the power to make their voices count." In other words, "tokenism" represents a symbolic power gesture without the ability to actually control the project. From this perspective, NFTs become a way to provide people with the illusion that "they are partners in the project." The symbol itself only provides an illusion of democratization.
Similarly, NFTs offer what appears to be decentralized ownership. Museums cede their control over tokens to participants. But in examining the structure of NFTs, we might ask whether control is actually being ceded, or whether NFTs simply serve to reinforce existing elements of power in historical and cultural institutions. Specifically, I’m thinking about the image file itself—where it is stored and who maintains and controls that storage.
JMW Turner, Messieurs les Voyageurs in the Snowdrifts of the Hill of Tara on their Return from Italy - 22 January 1829, Bequest of Robert Wylie Lloyd, courtesy of LaCollection and the Trustees of the British Museum.
In my project, the National Museum Liverpool maintains the files connected to the NFT on its servers, which means that the storage of information is centralized. This fosters the paradox of “distributing while retaining.” This term comes from the work of anthropologist Annette Weiner, and Haidy Geismar uses it to explain the unequal power relationship between museums and source communities. This unequal relationship is particularly evident in intellectual property, where ownership of intellectual property is often concentrated in institutions as digital content circulates. Haidy Geismar argues that this creates an unequal hierarchy of “distributing” digital content while “retaining” ownership, an unequal structure that creates the appearance of democratization but lacks any meaningful value because the project does not change the inherent structure of the institution. This unequal relationship also exists in NFTs if the NFT is distributed and the file remains on the museum’s server.
From another perspective, the use of decentralized storage systems, such as IPFS, also risks creating unequal flows. This approach stores a file on the Internet in a distributed storage manner, but it is necessary to consider who will pay for the maintenance of the storage. As a custodian, museums are likely to assume the role of maintaining storage in the future, but it is important that this form of preservation will not be used as a bargaining chip for future museums to control the storage content.
Transparency and its implications are paramount at every step of this process. While nuance is necessary to establish the real power relations that underpin digital “democratization”. In fact, we cannot assume that digital practices will somehow mediate shared power flows. Nowhere is this more evident than in the ideology of Web2, which fosters a false sense of security by allowing “access” in principle while failing to critically engage with the problems of institutional sharing.
So far, Web3 has been adhering to this approach, taking for granted that greater decentralization has given the field true democracy. In the context of Western museums, the idea of Web3 as an emancipatory paradigm ignores the deep political and historical connections between cultural institutions. These connections are so tight that no Internet paradigm can easily shake them. These NFTs developed by museums are often shrouded in colonialist collection histories and unequal power structures. If NFTs are to be used as a tool for democratization, this context, and the underlying and complex power relations that arise from it, must be taken seriously.
Frances Liddell is a researcher, writer and consultant working at the intersection of museums, art and Web3. Her PhD research, in collaboration with National Museums Liverpool, explored the use of NFTs in museum audience engagement practices and considered how blockchain can disrupt digital ownership, authority, authenticity and value. She uses her knowledge from this work to provide support and guidance to cultural organisations interested in exploring Web3 spaces. Her current research interests focus on critically interpreting themes of democratisation, reciprocity and guardianship in Web3.
Dr Liddell is a Scholar-in-Residence in the RCS community.
