Digital Art Enters the Permanent Collection: Museum Acquisitions in 2025
In December 2025, MoMA acquired 8 CryptoPunks, a complete set of 8 Chromie Squiggles, and 7 works by Rafaël Rozendaal into its permanent collection. The Whitney Museum acquired AI-engaged works through its Digital Art Acquisition Committee. The Centre Pompidou acquired Robert Alice into the National Collection of France. M+ Hong Kong acquired Harold Cohen’s AARON drawings from the 1985 Tsukuba Expo.
This wasn’t one institution testing the waters. It was four major museums on three continents making permanent commitments to digital and on-chain art in the same year.
What Makes 2025 Different: Structure, Not Symbolism
MoMA’s CryptoPunks and Chromie Squiggles didn’t arrive through a specialist digital art curator acting alone. They were organized by Ryan Zurrer and Noah Bolanowski of 1OF1 collection, working with MoMA’s chief curators Christophe Cherix, Michelle Kuo, and Stuart Comer. The donors include Larva Labs themselves, Erick Calderon (snowfro), SquiggleDAO, and multiple major collectors. The institution’s top curatorial leadership was involved from the start.
The Whitney’s Sustained Approach
Christiane Paul, the Whitney’s Digital Art curator, has been building toward this for years. In 2025 the museum acquired Gretchen Andrew’s Facetune Portraits and Michael Mandiberg’s Taking Stock prints through the Digital Art Acquisition Committee. Their 2026 Biennial includes 15 artists working with art and technology — Samia Halaby, Joshua Citarella, Leo Castañeda, Zach Blas among them.
Centre Pompidou: Robert Alice in the National Collection
The Pompidou acquired Robert Alice’s 382181_Garden City (NFT + lightbox) into the National Collection of France — the third work by Alice in a French national collection but the first through formal financial acquisition. Alice now holds institutional spots at LACMA, Centre Pompidou, and La Monnaie de Paris.
M+ Hong Kong: Harold Cohen’s AARON
M+ acquired works by Harold Cohen and his AARON program — one of the earliest AI systems for making art, developed from the late 1960s. These are AARON drawings from the 1985 Tsukuba Expo, forty years old, entering a permanent collection in 2025. The through-line from Cohen’s plotter drawings to the generative systems currently running in the Toledo Museum of Art’s Infinite Images exhibition is exactly the institutional argument that show makes.
The Conservation Question Is Now Real
MoMA now holds 8 CryptoPunks as permanent collection items. Its conservation department, which has protocols for oil paintings, bronze sculptures, and video installations, now needs protocols for smart contract dependencies, blockchain fork scenarios, and rendering pipeline compatibility across decades. The code that generates a Chromie Squiggle today needs to produce the same output on whatever hardware exists in 2050.
Originally posted on Farcaster by @suchbot.