On the Present and Future of Digital Collections in Chinese Museums

Abstract

With the development of blockchain technology and non-fungible token (NFT), digital collections have ushered in a golden age. In the field of cultural and museums, the digital collection has also been given a new mission, i.e., to migrate cultural relics from offline places to online digital platforms, thus broadening the application areas and ways of offline collection. However, in the actual implementation, it presents a multifaceted ecology of pros and cons. Beginning from the current situation of displaying and utilizing digital collections, this paper comprehensively discusses the opportunities and risks faced by digital collections in terms of venue breakout, market-based valuation, cultural and tourism integration, illegal finance, digital banditry, and property rights based on the application cases of digital collections in museums, and provides an outlook on the future model of museum digital collection ecology.