The Museum of Modern Art has added eight CryptoPunks and eight Chromie Squiggles NFTs to its permanent collection, strengthening institutional recognition of onchain art. The works were donated through a coordinated effort involving Larva Labs founders, Art Blocks creator Erick Calderon, and prominent collectors. They will be housed in MoMA’s Media and Performance department alongside video and experimental digital works.
CryptoPunks, launched in 2017, are widely regarded as one of the earliest NFT collections and helped define the profile-picture format that later dominated the market. Chromie Squiggles, introduced in 2020, served as the foundational collection for Art Blocks and played a central role in the rise of generative art on blockchain platforms.
The acquisition follows Yuga Labs’ sale of CryptoPunks intellectual property to the Infinite Node Foundation earlier this year, part of a broader effort to place the works in leading museums. The move comes as interest in blue-chip NFTs shows signs of stabilization amid broader market recalibration.
