Christie’s has announced the closure of its dedicated digital art department as part of a strategic reformatting of its sales approach. The pioneering department, established in 2022 at the height of the NFT boom, will be folded into the broader 20th- and 21st-century art sales categories. This move marks the end of Christie’s standalone push into NFTs and AI art amid a significant contraction in the digital art market.
Christie’s had been a leader in legitimizing digital art within the traditional auction world, famously selling Beeple’s NFT “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” for $69.3 million in 2021, a landmark sale that catalyzed the NFT craze. However, the digital art market has since stumbled, with a large majority of NFTs now considered inactive or “dead” and many collectors facing significant financial losses.
While Christie’s will no longer operate a dedicated digital art division, it will continue to offer digital artworks as part of its wider art programs. The closure reflects an evolving art sales strategy aiming to integrate digital works into conventional categories rather than maintaining a specialized, separate department. This move is in line with similar retrenchments by other major players like Sotheby’s, which downsized its NFT and metaverse teams last year.
The auction house has not confirmed the future of its Art+Tech Summit, a flagship event supporting digital and tech-driven art innovations. Christie’s 3.0 blockchain sales platform remains operational, signaling that while the structural approach has changed, digital art will retain a presence within the company’s offerings.
This development highlights the challenges of sustaining the digital art market beyond its early hype phase and raises broader questions about the future trajectory of blockchain-based art in the traditional art ecosystem.
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