Figge Details LACMA's 200+ Digital Art Gifts, James Hall Explains Otherside's Economy

LACMA announced an acquisition of more than 200 works spanning digital art and pioneering computer-based work from the 1960s onward. Figgie, who has spent three years on the museum’s Digital Art Leadership Group, described the collection as a record of artists’ engagement with computers, code, networks and AI across six decades, rather than simply a group of unrelated artworks. The artists represented include Keith Haring, Rafiq Anadol, Beeple, Tyler Hobbs and Frank Stella.

The acquisition includes four Bored Apes, four Mutant Apes, a hoodie CryptoPunk and a set of 12-folds. The Bored Apes came through the Damdow, which was funded by the ApeCoin DAO to place apes in institutions. Figgie said the effort builds on LACMA’s 2023 donations from the Cosmo Medici collection and connects the museum with collectors who assembled works including Bored Apes, Mutant Apes, CryptoPunks, Fidenzas and Rare Pepes.

Figgie said LACMA groups works across media around shared themes, and that its collection can reach audiences through loans and satellite campuses. The museum is laying institutional groundwork for digital art, with the hope that other museums will build canonical collections of their own. He said some institutions are already exploring how to get involved, and suggested LACMA’s acquisition could encourage further collecting and exhibition.

The collection’s institutional role also connects to debate over who controls attention and opportunity in digital art. Critics of platforms such as 6529 argued that curation can concentrate influence among a small circle; they questioned its 50 percent share of primary sales and cited requirements including prior participation or 50,000 nomination points. Defenders said the platform has raised artists’ visibility and paid them, while DMG said the points threshold is meant to deter bots and spam and that revenue supports the network and public-good projects. The discussion recognized that curation can help emerging artists, but questioned whether a platform’s share is justified and whether an artist-focused alternative could be sustainable.

James Hall described Otherside’s early-access test as a way to check whether core gameplay loops, the resource economy, protocols and contracts work, with the experience to expand iteratively. In the demo, players moved from the Nexus to deeds, gathered resources and used them to craft or sell; resources returned from the game become ERC20 tokens. Hall stressed that Otherside remains a demo and that the test showed only part of the planned experience.

The planned economy is intended to let players harvest resources to sell or craft items, including objects for display. Outposts would provide small plots for practice without requiring deed ownership, and players could participate in the resource game without building. Deed owners may eventually set taxes or restrict access to harvesters through token-gating, but Hall described these as ideas to refine during early access, not finalized features. Owners will have to balance protecting resources against attracting players, and competing tax rates could become part of the game’s strategy.

Hall said the first gameplay loop should work without players needing to notice blockchain approvals: people with an email address and video-game experience should be able to start without setting up crypto, even though assets and resources are on-chain. Otherside is also adding Solana support to bring more Solana communities and projects into the platform. Hall said interoperability requires considering the wider ecosystem, and that on-chain ownership could allow assets to work across different experiences.