The Museum of Modern Art in New York has added eight CryptoPunks and eight Chromie Squiggles to its permanent collection. The acquisition, which comes via donations from multiple collectors, is the latest acquisition by a major museum of on-chain art and one of the medium’s most significant institutional endorsements to date.
CryptoPunks are a collection of 10,000 unique, algorithmically generated 24×24 pixel characters on the Ethereum blockchain. They were launched by Larva Labs in 2017 and are considered both NFTs and works of art. Chromie Squiggles are also generative NFTs, with 10,000 editions in circulation, each one displaying a unique colorful wavy line. They were created by Erick Calderon (aka Snowfro) and were the first project on ArtBlocks, a digital art marketplace, also on the Ethereum blockchain.
“The acquisition of Cryptopunks and Chromie Squiggles by the world’s most important institution for modern and contemporary art is a clear sign that the crypto art movement has arrived in the canon of art history at an institutional level,” Georg Bak, a digital art adviser and founder of the Digital Art Mile, told ARTnews. “While digital art existed in a niche for decades, this acquisition [is] giving legitimation to one of the most interesting art movements of our time.”
CryptoPunks are widely considered the first major NFT collection and an iconic asset in the world of digital collectibles and art. “With CryptoPunks and Chromie Squiggles, MoMA acquired more than digital art; they support digital cultures that go beyond the technology and the market,” Diane Drubay, curator and founder of We Are Museums and WAC Lab, told ARTnews. “The acquisition, and how it was done, is a sign that MoMA acknowledges and contributes to a decentralized culture based on social protocols. Following the path already taken by the Centre Pompidou and many other cultural museums, it is now clear that institutions shifted the way they function and are ready to open up to new cultures.”
The 16 digital works enter the collection through MoMA’s Media and Performance department, which will soon put them on view next to new media art, including experimental technology. The collectors who donated the CryptoPunks are ARTnews Top 200 Collector Ryan Zurrer, Mara and Erick Calderon, Rhydon and Caroline Lee, and Cozomo de’ Medici.
SquiggleDAO, VonMises14, gmoneyNFT, jdh, and several other anonymous collectors donated the Chromie Squiggles, according to 1OF1, a Swiss-based digital art collection which helped coordinate both donations.
MoMA’s acquisition follows Yuga Labs’ sale of the CryptoPunks intellectual property to the nonprofit Infinite Node Foundation seven months ago. Soon after, Infinite Node Foundation launched a museum-partnership program for the collection. (Yuga Labs had bought the CryptoPunks IP from Larva Labs in 2022.)
The timing of the donation to MoMA aligns with a resurgence of interest in blue-chip NFTs. In late July, CryptoPunks recorded their highest weekly trading volume since March 2024, with more than $24.6 million in trades, according to The Block. Still, the collection’s total market capitalization, after peaking near $2.5 billion earlier this year, now stands at roughly $763 million, CoinGecko reported.
