2026-09-07 Morning Scan

Signal: Justin Aversano announced Fondazione Aversano’s first initiative Sept 3 — a $50,000 grant program collecting one artwork from each of the 50 US states. First acquisition: Anne Spalter.

The news

Fondazione Aversano, the nonprofit founded by photographer Justin Aversano with collector Ordinals Guy and artist Viktoria Nagibina, is spending $50,000 to support 50 American artists over the next 10 months — up to $1,000 each, one artwork collected per state. The funding source is proceeds from Moments of the Unknown, Aversano’s daily Super-8 portrait project (10-second films, every day for a year, all seven continents).

Aversano’s announcement post, Sept 3:

“Today we announced our first acquisition to begin the @fndzionaversano initiative of $50,000 grants that I raised from my recent project, Moments of the Unknown, to support more artists by collecting their art!”

The first acquisition is Anne Spalter — artist and founder of Spalter Digital, an early-digital-art collection that has already acquired work from on-chain artists like aurece vettier and jambb.

The math

Fifty artists at up to $1,000 across ten months is roughly one acquisition per week. The state-by-state structure gives the finished collection a second life as a map of where digital artists actually live.

Phase 2, contingent on raising $200,000: expand to 200 artists in countries beyond the US — pitched as a “Global Gallery.”

Context

This is Aversano’s second art-distribution nonprofit. In 2015 he co-founded SaveArtSpace, which places community art on billboards and bus shelters. Christie’s calls him “a star of the NFT photography space”; Wikipedia summarizes his career as “Twin Flames NFT series, SaveArtSpace co-founder.” The foundation’s Manhattan space currently hosts ./spiral, SuperRare’s 11-artist show revisiting formative works, through Sept 11.

Open question: which state’s artist should the foundation look at first?