Art Exhibition in Poland to Exclusively Accept Bitcoin as Payment
Earlier this year, the New York Observer ran a bit of a hit piece in which they proclaimed, basically, that art and Bitcoin don’t mix.
They described how at the Armory Show, they ran a pretty flawed experiment and polled everyone present about their usage of Bitcoin. It doesn’t matter if artists can use bitcoins via Purse.io or a gift card to get a discount on art supplies via Amazon and elsewhere, not to the Observer.
Now, a few months later, an art exhibition in Poland will be disproving this whole mythology. Julia Mafalda is a photographer and photojournalist who has worked for a number of high-profile venues, to include the L.A. Times. Her work is occasionally sold via galleries and exhibitions.
At her upcoming exhibition, entitled “America’s Beauty,” which features a number of photos she has taken over her career in the United States, Mafalda will be accepting bitcoins in lieu of the Polish zloty or the Euro. Although Poland is now integrating with the European Union, it is said they will not integrate the Euro until at least 2020 . Eurozone rules make no demands on exactly when member states have to integrate the Euro, which is currently valued a little more than four times higher than the Zloty.
Husband Actively Work in Bitcoin Space
Mafalda’s husband is reportedly currently developing a start-up in the Bitcoin space aimed at large, institution investors. Him and others, including Mafalda herself, conspired to make this event happen. It seems they are breaking the narrative that artists and art patrons have no love for Bitcoin previously created by other outlets. Certainly other artwork has been sold for Bitcoin, although it is often related to Bitcoin itself. These paintings , for instance, were sold a couple years back.
More recently, a photographer in the UK began accepting Bitcoin exclusively for her services. For highly sought-after goods and services, this can have positive waves, with people having no choice but to buy Bitcoin in order to engaged the good or service. There are those who have taken issue with this approach, and indeed it might seem more realistic to say that only forms of cash, digital or physical are accepted, but traditional bank cards are not worth the hassle.
In any case, the exhibition will take place at the MW WW Gallery in Warsaw beginning June 17th and ending June 25th. Bitcoin will be accepted for all items on view, either physical prints or super-imposed versions of Mafalda’s work. Visit the event’s Facebook page for more information.
