The House of Lobkowicz has managed thousands of pieces of art and cultural artifacts, such as hand-annotated manuscripts by Mozart and Beethoven, for hundreds of years. Their collections were confiscated under Nazi and Communist regimes but were returned roughly 30 years ago. Now, the family intends to preserve, study, and share the collection with the world — and is using NFTs to make that happen. Hear how Will Lobkowicz, director of digital media & innovation for House of Lobkowicz, and Michelle Choi, NFT strategist, used NFTs to raise funds to maintain and preserve this collection. Show topics:

  • the Lobkowicz story of how a Bohemian noble family ended up in charge of a 20,000-piece collection spanning 100 different locations
  • how William and Michelle started working together
  • what effect COVID-19 had on the House of Lobkowicz’s preservation efforts
  • how Michelle and William formulated their plan for NFCastle from Michelle’s garage
  • what Michelle and William learned from interviewing hundreds of people in the NFT space
  • why Michelle thinks blockchain is an improvement upon the traditional art world’s use of physical ledger systems
  • William and Michelle’s favorite NFT projects from NFCastle
  • what projects the money raised from NFCastle will restore for the House of Lobkowicz
  • what William and Michelle learned from hosting NFCastle
  • how NFCastle went about determining royalties for secondary sales for their NFTs
  • what’s next for NFCastle

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Episode Links

William Lobkowicz

Michelle Choi

NFCastle

  • Summary of NFT’s in the auction
  • Video content
  • NFCastle After Movie
  • Exhibition Building Behind the Scenes

Unchained Episodes from NFCastle

  

Episode Transcript:

Laura Shin: 

Hey, all. Before we begin, a couple quick announcements. First, I’m doing an end of year show with crypto predictions for 2022 by you. Please make a video or an audio recording of your 2022 crypto prediction or predictions and email it to [email protected] with the subject line crypto prediction by the end of day Tuesday, December 28, and although I have asked people to send their name and where they’re from, as somebody pointed out to me on Twitter, if you don’t want to dox yourself, I guess you don’t have to do that either. Unfortunately, I do need to give a forewarning that if you excessively promote anything, we will not include your prediction. If you just want me to read on air a prediction that you just email, that’s okay too. It’s just a little bit less fun. Don’t forget the deadline is Tuesday, December 28, and the email address is [email protected]. Please put crypto prediction in the subject line. 

Also, a reminder, my book is coming out on 2/22/22. If you’re looking for a holiday gift, pre-order it now to deliver later. Pre-order sales really help that book that first week to help establish further demand and get it on any lists. If you want to get a normie into crypto, this fun tale just may do it. Someone who worked with me on the book and knew nothing at all about crypto when we started, and after just two days of reading it and being nowhere near done with it, was asking me such intelligent questions about crypto that I asked, how do you know so much about crypto? Their response? From your book. By the end, they were completely obsessed and had already ordered a hardware wallet. Pre-order The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze today at bit.ly/cryptopians. That’s bit.ly/cryptopians, and now, onto the show. 

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no-hype resource for all things crypto. I’m your host, Laura Shin, a journalist with over two decades of experience. I started covering crypto six years ago, and as a senior editor at Forbes, was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the December 21, 2021 episode of Unchained. 

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Today’s guests are William Lobkowicz, Director of Digital and Media Innovation at the House of Lobkowicz, and Michelle Choi, NFT Strategist. Welcome, William and Michelle.

William Lobkowicz:

Hello. Thanks for having us. 

Michelle Choi:

Thank you so much for having us. We’re excited to be here. 

Laura Shin:

I met you both at the NF Castle in Prague in October, which was an NFT conference with an interesting purpose that’s different from what we’ve typically seen so far with NFTs. Will, why don’t you start by just explaining your family’s background, and then we can get to the conference later.

William Lobkowicz:

Absolutely. Well, it’s a long story that spans over 700 years. I come from an old Bohemian noble family that have been patrons of the arts for over 700 years, and over that time period, there were pieces collected by, paintings by Bruegel, Velázquez, Canaletto, Cranach. We have hand annotated musical manuscripts by Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn, along with decorative arts and ceramics, and these collections have been lost twice and regained twice, first under the Nazi occupation in 1939, and then eventually with the Communist occupation in 1948, and after living in exile, with my great-grandfather being an outspoken critic of Adolf Hitler, and also a critic of the Communist regime, we were forced to live in exile in the United States, and then in 1989 after the enlightened leadership and vision of Václav Havel, we came back to this country to see what would be left of our family’s heritage, and we really didn’t know what we would get back when we returned here, and it ended up being one of the largest restitutions in the country, consisting of collecting 20,000 movable objects that were spread across 100 different locations. 

Now, while that sounds like a wonderful fairytale story, of course there are a lot of issues that go around cultural preservation and taking care of these things, and for over 60 years, these pieces hadn’t really been well cared for, nor had the cultural monuments that we got back been taken very well care of. So, we had to sell off a lot of real estate assets and invest into the different cultural heritage sites to really preserve them and protect them, and as a family, we came to the decision that what we really wanted to do with these collections was open them to the public for the first time in history with the mission of preserving, studying, and sharing them with the world, and that’s what our family’s been doing over the last 30 years. We don’t live in any of these palaces and castles that we manage today. Instead, we try to look for ways where we can really inspire people so that we can share the past and really create the future. 

Laura Shin:

And just to clarify for listeners, you know, you described your family as a noble family, but as far as I understand, they were thee royal family of…well, I don’t know if the Czech Republic is the correct term, but of Bohemia or whatever, and it was your, I believe it was your great-grandfather who abdicated the throne because he believed in democracy?

William Lobkowicz:

Well, there were many noble families that were across Europe during this time period, and my family in particular was one of four major houses here in Bohemia that were helping manage the Kingdom of Bohemia for the Habsburg emperors at the time. 

So, my direct ancestor, the first Prince Lobkowicz, was made a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and served as Chancellor of Bohemia managing the Kingdom of Bohemia for the Habsburg emperor, and they were really the monarch that were reigning over this region, and then in 1918 after the first World War and the establishment of the Czechoslovak state here, my great-grandfather, who represented our family, was actually a great believer in democracy and actually gave up his title, the aristocratic title that we’ve held for hundreds of years so that we could support this new republic that was being created here, and he was quite a pivotal figure for us as a family because he really redefined what our role would be, and over the years I think, and up until today, our family has always adjusted based off of the different time periods that we’ve lived in, and my great-grandfather I think was a great visionary in seeing where the world was going and new types of republics that were being established all across Europe during that time period. 

Laura Shin:

And to give further background, why don’t we now explain how it was that you two met or how you two know each other? And it can either be Will or Michelle who describes this.

Michelle Choi:

I can start because I think that much like a lot of the NF Castle project, Will and I’s friendship happens mainly virtually. I think that we never had met in person before Will happened to be in Los Angeles for a Czech wedding, and a lot of my friends were also staying with me at the time, and so, my friend said, hey, I have this great friend who’s also from the Czech Republic. Why doesn’t he come join us for spring break? And my family happens to be very generous in hosting guests and thinks it’s so important to build community. My family came to America when my parents were around the high school age, and really building a home base in the United States is important, and so, it’s always been important in my family to bring friends together, new and old, and so, Will was a friend of several of my friends, stayed with my family, and really won over the heart of my family since he’s just the most incredible house guest. He always makes the best dinners and throws the best parties and cleans up and everything, and so, we came together because we had some mutual friends that brought us together, and then since then, stayed in touch throughout college, but really after graduation, haven’t seen each other a lot until Will’s sister reached out to one of my friends and said, hey, Will is doing virtual tours. It’s the wake of COVID. We haven’t had interesting ways to fundraise given that museum visitorship and tours are really going down without people coming in person. So, why don’t you check out this tour Will is doing? 

And so, I logged on. I saw Will giving this incredible tour to a very small audience, and right afterwards in the FAQ to Will said, why don’t you start selling these as offsites to tech companies? People love different ways of meeting together virtually, even if we can’t have offsites today, and they also love something that’s a little bit fun and interesting. I worked at Google in the past, and Google loves to have holiday parties at museums, and I thought what better way to still bring in that spirit as well as that community building in a culturally interesting way through Will’s virtual tour. So, that’s how we started working together again. 

Laura Shin:

Will, did you want to add anything on that?

William Lobkowicz:

Well, I’ll just add, when I’m giving my tours, I’m really focusing on the history and the art, and it’s one of my favorite things is really finding ways to share these fun stories with everyone, and Michelle has been such a critical part of helping us share this story with other people. Her background as well lends to really thinking about how to actually utilize better technology, look for ways to connect with different people as well, and this is where this kind of partnership really started, and it was wonderful to get a chance to work with her a little bit more and think about ways where we could continue sharing this story with more people, which is really what I enjoy the most. 

Laura Shin:

And so, how did that go? Will, actually, why don’t you describe a little bit more about how your family has traditionally funded these efforts to maintain and restore your cultural objects, and then why don’t you also describe how these pandemic efforts went with the corporations?

William Lobkowicz:

So, when we first came back after the revolution and we started establishing different museums across these different properties, we had to think about ways to actually finance the care and upkeep of these collections. We primarily relied upon cultural tours and activities and different events that have been held in these historic properties to help finance the care and upkeep of these collections. We also have a very generous donor base that has made it possible to support these collections. I have to acknowledge my grandmother as well who is 91 and is in the United States and helped establish a 501c3 that helped a lot of these efforts, and one thing that is quite difficult I think sometimes to understand is what goes into some of the upkeep and care of these places. While we do have works of art that are worth large sums of money, there are also old declared Czech cultural monuments, meaning that they can’t leave the country or be sold. So, we have a responsibility to take care of these objects that are incredibly precious and are public goods and are something that’s really important to world cultural heritage, but we’ve never had the opportunity to sell any of these things in order to finance our other educational programs or public programming, but I think this also presents a very interesting case because this collection, despite all of these moments in history, Nazis, Communism, there are different wars that have happened over these 700 years, they’ve all stayed together as a collection, and that is unique, and you don’t see that with museum institutions, and very often you don’t see that with a lot of private collections. 

For us, especially when COVID hit, we really had to think creatively about ways to support these collections. When we had to close our doors, there was still work that had to take place. We have an entire collections team that we have on staff that does an incredible job making sure that we’re able to share these things with people, and we had to think creatively about how do we make sure that we can continue with those good works and continue sharing these things with the world? And that’s when we started slowly approaching and looking at the blockchain space, which came out of sort of our virtual tours and some of the work that we’ve been doing together with Michelle.

Laura Shin:

Yeah, and can you elaborate on that? Like, how did you end up turning to NFTs? I guess it was Michelle who had that idea, or maybe not. I’m not sure.

Michelle Choi:

It certainly was not my idea. It was an idea that was brought to me from some of the people we started to meet while we were selling virtual tours. Will and I were just looking back at our OKRs. We planned our 2021 very much like I would typically plan a product team at Google, deciding what would be our…

Laura Shin:

Wait. What’s an OKR?

Michelle Choi:

It’s an objective or key result, and so, pretty much like a classic corporate company would say, what is the end goal for the year? Will and I at the beginning of ‘21 thought what is important to us? What would be considered a success at the Lobkowicz Collection? And what I really loved about working with the Lobkowiczes is their commitment to retaining their staff during a financially hard time. Will was telling me about everyone on his team that has been working so hard in maintaining these collections, about this group’s dedication to, despite financial hardship, despite Hitler, despite the Communists, make sure that these collections and pieces stayed together, and that mission was really beautiful to me. 

I’m a classical pianist myself. My mother has always taught me to love art history, and when I heard about this story of people who, despite the fact that they could not bring people physically together in these beautiful spaces, still wanted to share them virtually so that none of their staff had to be let go, just like a lot of businesses were struggling with COVID. It’s a tough perception problem Will and I faced where we thought, all right, we’re going to be advertising the restoration of these beautiful castles, and how do we dispel this image of a fancy prince in a castle, when in reality it’s an incredibly passionate lover of culture, a whole family of them, that is upkeeping museums? And people don’t enter the museum industry for the finances. It’s really for the arts and the culture, and I thought that that was so beautiful. 

So, we looked at the course of the year and said, this is how much money we’d need to raise in order to fund Will’s digital media staff, and from there backwards approached the problem of, all right, how do we fundraise for that? Let’s sell virtual tours. Let’s have people visit the castle, but from the comfort of their desks with their teams, at the Googles, at the Facebooks, at the BCGs of the world. We sold to all different types of companies that were looking for ways to have community building amongst their team, and some of the people that we’ve met, particularly from some of my recent companies, said, you guys have a physical collection that can’t move, and you need fundraising for it. Have you ever heard of crypto art? And then it was kind of history from there. We were introduced from some of my former colleagues to someone named Richerd from Manifold who gave us our first introductions in smart contracts, and as soon as Will and I understood that NFTs were so much more than a piece of digital artwork, but rather an entire set of financial tools to empower creators, we turned from virtual tours and fully committed to the NFT space.

Laura Shin:

And so, when you say that, like what were your first thoughts that, I mean, obviously that you would sell NFTs to fund the restoration and maintenance that you needed, but like how did you go about starting this journey?

William Lobkowicz:

Just from the perspective of us as a cultural institution exploring this, it was a scary moment, I will say, because we were definitely going into a field that was unknown to us, and if we were going to do so, we said that we wanted to make sure that we did so thoughtfully, that we didn’t rush into the space, and to us, it wasn’t just about finding a financial mechanism to support these collections, but also finding a new community of people who could start engaging with these collections, and I think the more and more we started exploring this, we saw the value in a sense of community that could be created in the space, and for me as a next generation in our family thinking about how we can continue sharing this art with people and get people excited about the arts, I love the idea of connecting with a younger audience that could feel a sense of pride or a sense of ownership or a part of this community, so that not only will they learn about these works of art and get excited about them, but they’ll continue to share that with other people, and if we had learned anything from the virtual tours we had done, we had people tuning in from six different continents at the same time for a virtual tour, and that impact that we had was incredible. We had more digital visitors than we had physical visitors, and that excited us even further in terms of our thinking, really broadening it to think about how we can connect culture to people without physical barriers.

Michelle Choi: 

I think to build on that also, what we really saw was that the hardship of COVID could also force the industry to move forward digitally, just like we had our hands forced. I always describe the problem Will came to me with as an impossible escape room. He said, we have this collection. We have no fundraising mechanism, and nobody can travel, and our revenue sources are from events and visitorship. There weren’t a lot of different options, and I think when your back is against the wall, you are forced to be creative, and so, Will’s family really embraced the fact that, hey, there aren’t really any other fundraising opportunities for a physical visiting business in a digital age of COVID. What options do we have? And so, when we started looking at NFTs, it became really very apparent to us that there are a couple of assets of NFTs that are important that, as Will is saying, they build borderless communities, that the people who visit us no longer are constrained by the countries they’re from, but rather their interest, and so, now we have people who are interested in Czech heritage. I’m Korean, for example. Koreans love Czech heritage. I don’t exactly know why yet. Maybe Will can explain, but now we have all of these Koreans tuning in and writing in the YouTube channels in Korean, and I had my aunt translate since you have this global community. So, the borderless component was really exciting. 

It’s also extremely accessible. Instead of only being able to partake in the history of the Lobkowiczes by having your name next to a plaque, next to a big painting, you can buy an NFT for 10 dollars. You can be part of the entire mission to preserve our history without having a really large wallet. It’s also accessible because it’s visual. People now understand when I donate to the Lobkowiczes, I get a visual image that represents my donation in a way that…right now when I donate, for example, through Google, I get a receipt, but it doesn’t look very pretty. NFTs are a much more beautiful and interactive type of receipt, and finally, it’s transparent. When I give my money to the Lobkowiczes through blockchain, I know where that money goes. I know it goes to the Lobkowicz wallet, and then in the future we’ll have wallets for the different real estate assets that they’re trying to fundraise, so you know exactly where your money is going, too. So, that’s how we thought about it is that NFTs have all of these different components that make it a really compelling strategy and financial mechanism for fundraising.

Laura Shin:

And at that time, were there other cultural institutions that you know of that were doing something similar or looking at this space, or were you really just kind of pioneers in this?

William Lobkowicz:

I think there were many…a lot of cultural institutions are looking at it right now, and there were many that were sort of exploring it. The Uffizi made a sale of their Michelangelo during that same summer. The Carolinum museum in Linz also held an exhibition about NFTs as well. So, it was definitely something that was being explored, but at a very minimal level actually, and for us, before we went fully into it, this was this kind of…we wanted to make sure that we brought in all of the players from this space so that we could learn from many other people before we fully went into all of this, and that’s kind of how this idea of NF Castle was born was inviting a whole bunch of people to Prague so that we could interact, connect with people, see what are some of the frontiers of this technology, what are some of the risks associated with it, and test some things. It’s really an experiment, and from that experiment, we’re very interested to see what comes from it, but I think for us, we really took the long-term approach. 

Coming from a family with a long history, I think it’s very important that we think thoroughly about the things that we create in the future so that they have a long lasting history, and so, when Michelle and I first started exploring this, and she can talk a little bit more about this process, but we took months where we were just talking to people, asking questions because we were very new to this space and we wanted to make sure that we respected the people that have been exploring it for a long period of time, who’ve really been thinking thoughtfully about and making advances in the space, and make sure that when we really started doing it ourselves, that we did so properly.

Laura Shin:

And so, yeah, tell me a little bit more about like how you came up with the idea for NF Castle, what your initial vision was, et cetera.

Michelle Choi:

So, to Will’s point, we all started with user research, just making sure we understood the space. The fundamental question that we had to answer was do we bring people who are interested in the physical art world into the digital world where crypto is thriving, or do we bring people who are what we call digital native, using crypto tools, trading digital assets, into the cultural world? Which direction did we want to go to? And pretty quickly, we decided that we wanted to bring the crypto native people into the arts world since art is often easier to explain than crypto, and because it is a cause that people can get behind if they understand the right context, and so, to do that, we, as great as meeting on the internet had been, we decided to all meet in person, and by us all, I mean the entire team that put together NF Castle. 

So, Will and I had been working together for several months at that point on virtual tours, but I had also met a colleague, a former colleague of mine named Ben Rosenbluth who had joined along in helping us figure out what is the long-term strategy? You can probably tell Will and I are very fast paced, let’s go at full speed types of people, and we needed someone with a little bit of balance and perspective to remind us, look, this technology is here to stay. Let’s not follow the hype cycles. Let’s look long term, and Ben was the person who said, if we want to set tastes within the NFT world, we need to speak to the taste makers. Let’s not look at what’s happening here and there day to day, but let’s talk to the people who collect art. Let’s talk to the people who understand the value of a crypto collection. So, that’s what we did. He also then enlisted his high school friend, Jake Al-Haffar, who has a design background, who has just been our creative genius in all of the artistry behind the NFTs and the exhibition, and we met in person. We had the fortune of my parents really understanding blockchain for various reasons and being willing to have the four of us sit…basically like Google started in Susan Wojcicki’s garage, NF Castle basically started in parents’ garage of the four of us having a list of all the requirements of how do you build an NFT that suits a crypto buyer? Thinking through all of that, and spending about three weeks traveling up California interviewing everyone. We spoke to about 100 people in the course of just that three weeks of gathering information. 

We did a similar type of road show through the East Coast to talk to people more in the arts space to go to Sotheby’s, to see the auction houses, to see the NFT galleries. We took our time to understand this space before we then decided what is the first best move? And we had gone to a couple of conferences at that point, to Bitcoin in Miami, to Ethereum in Paris, and Ben said, well, the key distinguisher for these projects is clearly community. The way that you bring people on to the long-term vision of your project is you show that you have long-term vision, and Will had the long-term vision. They’ve lasted for 700 years. They’ll only invest in things that last for 700 more years. Let’s make sure we take the time to find our buyers, to find people who support us, and so, we decided let’s bring everyone together in Prague. Let’s show them what we have, and so, that’s why NF Castle was born, as an attempt to bring together a community, and we, unfortunately, felt we had to do it quickly since we didn’t know when the world might close again. So, we wanted to bring together the community before COVID might make it impossible for us to do so again.

William Lobkowicz:

I think bridging the crypto and the art worlds are something that is very often quite intimidating to both groups actually because very often both worlds live in their own worlds as well, and what we really wanted to illustrate is what sort of a merger between those two spaces could achieve. I mean, Michelle and I are a very good example of that because Michelle is far more tech savvy than I am. She has a much better understanding of how to help cultural institutions with institutional planning, where I’m thinking about the arts and trying to share a great history with people and share my own knowledge, and when we merged and worked together, we were able to create something wonderful with those virtual tours, and it’s the same idea with this concept, and so, when NF Castle was being created, we really wanted to make sure that we had builders, artists, investors, different people who’ve been operating in both of these spaces for a long time, and have an intimate setting for people to get to know one another, and then build the future together, which is exciting, and that kind of culminated with three things that we wanted to do. 

The first was putting together an exhibition, which we opened to the public entirely free of charge so that people can understand what is an NFT, and what are the different ways they could be shown? What are some of the examples of great NFTs that we’re seeing this space, and how can we create pieces that can be inspired by the collections that are also quite interesting? And then we also held a conference where we were very happy to have you, Laura, as well, where we invited different thought leaders in this space to really think…not just talk about how wonderful NFTs are, but what are some of the issues in this space as well, and how can we try to correct those things by working together? And it’s really about bringing people together, which is what we love to do so much.

Laura Shin:

Yeah, and so, when you had those hundreds of interviews with the different, or more than 100 interviews with the different NFT people, what were your conclusions about how you could use this technology for the mission that you had?

Michelle Choi:

I think the fundamental conclusion from talking to people was that nobody had any idea what an NFT was, and that fundamentally the reason that NFTs have not taken off in the way that I envision them in the future is because of a lack of education, where fundamentally NFTs have existed for longer than the Lobkowicz families have existed. 

Mesopotamia has had ledgers tracking where goods are passed for thousands of years. That’s where the origin of a ledger came from, and likewise, NFTs are just a ledger for different types of assets. An NFT fundamentally is just a notarized proof of payment for a good or a service, and right now everyone is conflating NFTs with NFTs that are on the blockchain, putting physical goods on the blockchain, but an NFT is a concept that’s existed far before then. It’s proof that I’ve paid for something, just like when I…well, Will has this large collection of physical artworks. Nothing on the artwork says the Lobkowicz name on it. It’s…or maybe some in your collection do, Will, but in general, a lot of the art history provenance tracking is not tracked on the back of a painting. It’s tracked in a ledger somewhere, either it’s held by Sotheby’s, but actually right now there’s not a good understanding of where the ledger of different art assets are passed along, and so, what we saw in the technology of blockchain is a very fair way to keep track of who owns different assets, whether they not be digital assets. 

We can have entire provenance history or basically history of ownership of one of Will’s pieces, which went from the Lobkowiczes to the Communists to Hitler back to Will. That’s where a lot of the value is generated in that ownership history. We can have all of that stored in a database that is transparent and accessible to everyone, as opposed to just held by a couple of art gallerists or whoever typically manages that, and so, we saw this as an opportunity to introduce people to a concept that they’re very familiar with, but just is notarized in a different way, rather than Sotheby’s telling you, yes, in fact this painting came from this owner, from this artist. All of that is now already on the blockchain, so I don’t need to go through a middleman to look it up, and so, we saw, just like Will’s family has always been keeping track of provenance history, Will’s dad brought the collection of 20,000 objects together by going around and showing the receipts that he had for everything in the collection. That’s what NFTs are. 

We are likewise demonstrating to other people, this is how you continue to stake ownership into your cultural heritage objects, or also to patron them, to show people, look, this is a digital representation of, for example, a Veronese piece, a beautiful Renaissance painting in Will’s collection. We demonstrated that if you show the x-ray underneath it, there’s a whole different layer of the painting, and so, now there’s a digital way for people to understand what they’re buying into that’s really educational and will teach people how cool art history is, which is kind of what Will and I are about. We want to bring people who are interested in the digital age into historical culture and recognize that there are a lot of cool artistic opportunities if you merge the two.

Laura Shin:

And Will, actually, did you want to elaborate on what Michelle mentioned about your dad using receipts to pull the collection together?

William Lobkowicz:

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, the first thing when we came back, when anything was taken from us, either by the Nazis or the Communists, they always issued a receipt of some kind. They were very bureaucratic, and in order to make any official seizure legal, they needed to offer us a receipt to prove so. So, these were the first things in restitution that we actually had to get back, and so, it involved first restituting those papers using a passport that my grandfather had held before we was named a stateless citizen and a refugee, and he presented that, proved his identity, and then with these receipts, which we had both from the Nazis and the Communists, we then used them and presented them at different locations to actually reclaim all of these different works of art across these 100 different locations. So, provenance history is incredibly important to us. Provenance history is actually what has made it possible for us to get these pieces back, and just from my own study of art history, and also I’ve spent some time at some of the auction houses as well, I see a lot of use cases with this technology that can actually very much improve the way the art world works actually, ways for us to be able to properly track where these things have gone over time, and there are all sorts of issues with provenance that exist today, and tying that to ownership is really a novel and exciting concept and something that I think we will be seeing a little bit later on, but time will tell, but it’s important to us for that reason, too. 

Laura Shin:

Yeah. That’s such an incredible story about how your father pulled this collection together. Yeah, and it’s so, so relevant for the NFT discussion and just, yeah, really interesting, but okay. So, in a moment, we’re going to talk a little bit more about NF Castle, and you know, what eventually happened with your effort, but first, a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible.

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Back to my conversation with Will and Michelle. So, how did you end up picking which artworks and restoration projects you would target as being right for your first NFT offering?

William Lobkowicz:

For us, we had a conversation with our internal team here at the Lobkowicz Collections to identify projects that were a priority. When COVID hit actually, we had many plans for different restoration projects that we were already looking at, things that were at risk of permanent damage if we didn’t address them immediately, and there are a couple of examples of that, including just to name one, there are these glass negatives that we have in the collection, which have documented all of the different pieces and paintings that were once on display in many of these different castles and estates, and that collection also contains paintings that have been lost during the Nazi and Communist period, and they have very important information for our own research and studies. Now, the issue with these glass negatives is that actually they were at risk of permanent damage because they had been taken over 100 years ago, and so, there was a process of digitization that needed to take place of these things so we didn’t lose this very important historic data, and then we also needed to make sure that we put them in climate controlled conditions to preserve them in perpetuity, and that was one project we identified as something we wanted to fundraise for. So, we introduced this concept of proof of patronage, where we found two paintings that we’ve actually lost that we had, and we took little pictures of the glass negatives themselves, and with the purchase of these two glass negatives, you were financing that entire restoration project so that we could continue finding these uncovered stories. So, that was a really exciting concept to us, and this is how we identified a lot of the other priority projects that we had that we were trying to fundraise for throughout the course of the entire event. 

Laura Shin:

Wow. Yeah. That’s…I really like that example, and can you actually maybe talk about some of the other projects that you felt were especially ripe for being NFTs? I felt there were so many that just seemed, you know, very appropriate for this first NFT offering.

William Lobkowicz:

Absolutely, and I can’t take credit for all of this as well. I wanted to quickly mention Jake Al-Haffar who curated the entire exhibition that we had on display, but also helped develop a lot of these great ideas working with us, but there were pieces that we created that were artistic derivatives of underlying works of art, which were really quite exciting. So, one Michelle was mentioning earlier, which is called Unseen Gaze, and we took a painting that we have by Paolo Veronese, which shows David and the head of Goliath, and this is already a very well-known work of art, but we thought how do we show something that you can’t see in the physical world? And we added infrared and x-ray photography in an animated version of that painting where you could actually see the underpainting on that canvas, and there you see a ghostly head, which was an earlier sketch that was done by Veronese. So, we’re really seeing a second painting that you would never see in the real world, and that was another project that helped fundraise for us as well. 

We had another piece which was really quite exciting called Menuet, which was written by one of my ancestors, Anna Maria Wilhlemina von Althann, who by virtue of being a woman was not recognized for her musical abilities at the time, and so, we took this handwritten minuet by her and recorded the music, which hasn’t been played in over 250 years. So, it was the first time that you really are hearing this for the first time, and we also animated how she would have written this piece itself, and that for us was exciting because not only are we sharing virgin material with the world, but we’re also trying to find a way to right some of these wrongs of history and really acknowledge some of these very key players, and if you go through the history of the Lobkowiczes, and up until this day, nothing would have been possible without the strong Lobkowicz women throughout the course of this story, and I really, we all really were thinking about ways where we could share those histories, and the last piece which was also quite interesting, what the technology showed, the degradation of sgraffito. 

This was an animated CGI that was created where we took a panel off of the exterior of Nelahozeves Castle, which is just 35 minutes outside of Prague, and the entire castle is decorated with sgraffito, which is the technique of scratching into stone to create a design. Well, in the case of this sgraffito, it needs to be restored every 30 to 50 years. Over time, there’s degradation that takes place due to the weather. We’ve had a tornado that hit once in that area as well that had damaged that, and so, consistently that’s a project that we need to continue working on, and so, we wanted to create a piece that was educational, that could tell people about what actually happens when those elements hit that sgraffito. So, we showed it degrading over time. We showed weather hitting that piece as well, and then we showed it rebuilding itself because with the purchase of that NFT, you are financing that project to redo that sgraffito, and thinking about it from a long-term perspective, any royalties with the resale of that piece that are created will go towards that project because that is an example of a project that will need to be continued to be restored over time no matter what for another 700 years, and the idea that this can exist permanently on the blockchain and continue preserving that was a really exciting concept for us to explore, too.

Laura Shin:

And what did you set the royalty rate at? Because I would imagine, yeah, I mean obviously secondary trading has been such a huge thing for NFTs, so I could see, you know, if these NFTs do get traded, then yes, that would bring some sort of regular revenue, but obviously if it’s quite low, you know, I don’t know, do you expect that it would amount to, you know, whatever it is that you need to continue doing the restoration?

William Lobkowicz:

I doubt that it would actually fund the entire thing, in all honesty. Just to give you an idea, the cost of just redoing all the sgraffito on that castle, it’s a one million dollar investment, and that’s an example of…when you’re thinking about that from the perspective of a business regularly, you know, normally you get a return on an investment of something like that. The harsh reality of what we’re working with day by day is that we consistently have to just preserve and protect these things first, and so, with that piece, I believe royalties are set at 10 percent, and we don’t expect that to probably finance the entire thing, unless we get a massive buyer, and we need to keep thinking about creatively finding other ways through secondary sales that we could potentially do that, but for us right now, we wanted to kind of test some of these concepts that we’re exploring, and with what we’ve learned from the sales that we’ve made and the conference that we held, we can start identifying what works well and what we can present as an example for other cultural institutions as well, or nonprofits for ways they can finance and fundraise for their own projects.

Michelle Choi: 

I’d also…I’ll push back a little bit on Will’s point that it’s not possible for the secondary sales to do substantial revenue work, and that, as it currently stands, that is true. Our team is not interested in pushing out sales that have fast turnover and have large secondary sales immediately, but we do believe in the long-term value of our projects, and we also understand the economy of NFTs where we are no longer the primary salesmen of these NFTs, the new owners are, and so, in terms of the future value of those, that’s up to the new owners.

William Lobkowicz:

Right.

Michelle Choi:

Sure, we’ll take some of the royalties because we helped start the foundations, but the whole point of NFTs and the provenance history and the royalties is to keep passing on that responsibility, and so, I’m really excited to see where the community of people who have purchased our NFTs will continue to advertise the resale of these NFTs because most…for their own speculative upside, but also for the ultimate cause that they donated for, and the second point I’d add, Will, is that there also is a plethora of opportunities of collaborations with artists beyond the work that we’ve done for the Lobkowicz specific collections, which were all collaborations since we had incredible artists in the background who pieced those together. We’ve linked everyone’s information on our credits page that’s linked on this podcast. 

There’s just not enough time to list everyone who’s participated, but we also had a couple of artists who did very explicit collaborations, such as Matt Stone who did his piece derived off of inspiration from the Cabinet of Curiosity, or Alexa Meade who had inspiration from Cranach, as well as Obvious who made all of these scanned generative pieces of art based on this incredible historical map collection that the Lobkowiczes have, and so, we have various artists that we plan to continue to serve as the inspiration for. These castles and palaces existed so that you can bring artists together with patrons and then create new beautiful work, and that patronage will influence what that work looks like, and so, those are other ways that cultural institutions can continue to generate revenue while collaborating is to not just make new iterations of the old, but create completely new digital iterations that have some inspiration from what might’ve existed but are completely standalone pieces. So, all sorts of interesting ways to continue to gather funds.

Laura Shin:

So, I actually wanted you to expound a little bit further on those artworks that were created specifically. Like, how did you come up with the idea of creating brand new artworks, and you know, when do you think it makes more sense to do that versus when to create an NFT that is more directly tied to what it is that you’re trying to preserve?

William Lobkowicz:

There were two types of ways we wanted to really explore how to show something that could be really quite exciting that is inspired by the collections, and the pieces that we had created were an excellent opportunity to showcase things that you can’t see in the physical world, but for us as an institution and a cultural institution, we’re consistently trying to look for ways where we can inspire other people from these collections to create things in the future, and the idea of working with different artists is incredibly exciting to us because it means that these paintings aren’t just sitting on the wall, but they’re helping create something and create a new future, and that was what was so exciting about these collaborations we had with these artists. 

With Obvious, which Michelle was mentioning earlier, they got access to a maps collection, which we don’t have on public display actually, typically. So, it meant that we were able to actually showcase more of these works of art in a new digital format where we were also able to experiment a little bit with a new artistic technique that is actually quite controversial in the arts world, which is this generative art, and for us, it was not only an exploration which was quite exciting for us as an institution, but it was also an exciting way to get artists excited by these works of art and find sources of inspiration to create, and when Matthew Stone created his piece, which was inspired by Cabinet of Curiosities painted by Baellieur, it was also so interesting and fun to see how this could be reinterpreted in a different way that could speak to people in a way that maybe that underlying work of art might not have spoken to other people. Very often, we’re always trying to look for ways to excite people in different ways. When I do my tours, I’ll sometimes talk more about music or decorative arts or the arms or the paintings depending on what our audience is, and when artists are able to take those pieces and take it to a new level where they’re using these new techniques that make these collections even more relevant, that’s exciting to us in many ways.

Laura Shin:

Yeah, and I will write up an article with some of these artworks as images in it so people can see the Matthew Stone piece for sure. It just looks very contemporary, and it’s animated, or I don’t know how you would describe that, but you know, it’s sort of like a looping video type thing, and so, it looks very contemporary and just, yeah, kind of like more similar to the kind of NFTs that people think of when they hear the word NFT. So, let’s now talk a little bit about the event. How was that, you know, pulling that together given that the purpose of it was pretty different from what people, you know, typically thought of when they were thinking of NFTs? Was that a challenge, or did people seem to understand, or was it just trying to attract them with the promise of a gala at a castle? Which was definitely one of the enticements for me.

Michelle Choi:

I can start with that where I think what Ben and I realized pretty early on in the crypto space is that as much as people talk about spending all of their time with their friends in the metaverse, people like to go to a fun gathering, and so, when we were at Bitcoin in Miami and we saw the number of people who were meeting for the first time despite being long-term metaverse friends, it became pretty clear to us that that was the right first step. If we wanted to enter this space in a way that brought along the community, we needed to build a community, and so, we did have a couple of different headlines when we came into the space of…sometimes we would approach people and say, hey, do you want to come to our castle party in Prague? We knew that that was sticky, but at the end of the day, that was not the actual message. 

That’s just what got people listening, and then what got people to stay was understanding that this was not just another conference in a cool location. It was a conference to bring people from the digital world into the physical world and to remind them that if we don’t continue to take care of the world that we live in IRL and just focus on the digital world, then we will lose some of this cultural heritage, that some of the sgraffito on these castles will not exist anymore, that some of these glass negatives that are functionally digital artwork, not just physical artwork, need preservation and care, and so, while we led with a bit of a pitch of trying to get people excited about joining us in an interesting space, we then used that initial hype to educate people on the long-term mission of this so that…I think, Laura, even when you were at NF Castle, quickly realized that the actual message that we had when we were in person was very different because it’s impossible to properly communicate what we were doing, which is a fundraiser at a castle for a cultural heritage institute, and that really needed to be messaged in person. So, that’s how we saw it.

Laura Shin:

One thing that really struck me during that weekend was the two-hour tour you gave the next day, where hilariously people, just so you know how the gala went, I went to the tour at 5 p.m., and I said to Will, good morning. So, anyway.

But you know, during that time, I mean, you know, you just talked so much about your family’s history, and it was so rich and so fascinating, and it clearly needs to be like a book or a movie or something. I mean it was just, there were so many twists and turns, and you know, then it really became clear what the mission was and what the purpose was, and you know, even though I sort of understood that obviously going into the event, once I really heard what the collection had been through in terms of just its own basic survival, then you know, the purpose of what you were doing really became clear, but did you want to add on anything Michelle said, or…?

William Lobkowicz:

Well, it’s exactly what you were saying, Laura. It’s a complex story with lots of twists and turns, and I think when we first started talking about this, this entire concept is ridiculous in itself, inviting a whole bunch of people to Prague to come to a conference that looks at a bridge between the art world and blockchain, and I think a lot of people when I was just sending cold Twitter DMs definitely thought that this was a fake thing, or it sounded like a scam, and so, I think it took some time for us to really connect with some of our friends and explain, no, this is a real thing we’re really trying to do and put this together, but I’m so happy it did because what really stood out to me was how wonderful it was to see that overlap with different people. I love sharing stories with people, but it also led to so many wonderful thoughts and ideas growing from that, which can really create something quite beautiful.

Michelle Choi:

Yeah, and some really important relationships. I think we’re excited to have met you, Laura, to have met all of the other guests at NF Castle who we’re now doing various collaborations with. It’s a good place to inspire and to start building.

Laura Shin:

And so, how did the event and the auction go in your view? You know, what are the things that you think went well? What do you think could’ve gone better, et cetera?

Michelle Choi:

Will, do you want to start with what went well?

William Lobkowicz:

Sure. I think what was really wonderful was the ability for people to come and discover during the exhibition that we held, learn what an NFT was, what is blockchain, and see some of the examples of that space, and I think the people who came really appreciated the time we took to try to explain some of these concepts, and very often when people don’t understand something, they immediately put up barriers to it, and what we wanted to do was explain how this technology could be used, and it’s really quite an exciting and novel concept. So, the exhibition was a great success in that sense, and then the conference I was incredibly happy with. 

The panels we talked about I thought were quite balanced. We were able to bring in Juan Manuel Sevillano who is the head of the Dalí Foundation, who was able to speak about things from a very important side of a very important cultural institution. We brought in Dr. Alfred Weidinger from the Carolinum Museum in Linz, who put on one of the first NFT exhibitions, and we also had some wonderful people who have been operating in the space. I can’t credit everyone because there are just so many. Maria Shen, who really was someone who brought us into this. We have people…Will Papper, who spoke about things from the Dow perspective, and we also looked at things from a legal perspective too and seeing what are some of the issues that are surrounding this space, and what are some of the things to come? So, it was a success in that we had a gathering of some very different people who were able to think quite critically about how to move forward, and of course I think everyone really enjoyed gathering and getting to know one another, which was really nice. 

Michelle Choi:

And the fundraising angle was quite a proof of concept for us. We fundraised enough to cover the restoration of all of the urgent projects. Will can speak to that a little bit more, but I mentioned that Will and I originally set our OKRs, our goals for the year, and we so far exceeded them that now the bottleneck is no longer about fundraising. It’s about finding sufficient conservators who fit the criteria to do the conversation work, and that’s a really powerful story for us, that in the course of a weekend we can bring a group of people together who believe in our mission enough and who believe in philanthropy in the form of crypto to really change the course of this cultural institution, and that was powerful for us and is motivating us to continue to share how we did it and get other people on board.

William Lobkowicz:

I’ll add that this space I’m in right now is actually a space that has been in desperate need of restoration actually. There are huge humidity issues that have been taking place here for years, and that’s due to these windows in the space, and it’s a very specialized space to restore, but the Chinese belvedere we have here is going to be completely restored as well, which is a really exciting concept, along with 31 different restorations projects, which some of which we’ve been trying to fundraise for over seven years. So, that was very exciting to us, and the funds that were raised from the auction have also allowed us to help with some of the operating expenses just to manage these collections day by day, and keep our incredible staff going so that they can keep researching and sharing more of their discoveries with all of you.

Laura Shin:

So, I know that for the auction there was one person in particular who ended up buying, I don’t know if it’s most of the NFTs, but at least many of the NFTs, and what impact do you feel having this single patron account for so much of the sales does for your effort?

William Lobkowicz:

It really made a large difference. We actually had two major patrons that were responsible for most of the NFTs that we’ll be creating and supporting those things, and it really makes a huge, huge difference, and for us, we want to make sure that those donors and people who have supported us really are taken in as a part of this entire experience and get to see where their good works are going. So, some of them have actually, are going to be visiting our restoration studio with our chief restorer who’s going to be working on some of these things. We’re going to be documenting that process as well so that people can learn about what goes into it. 

For us, it’s made a world of difference, and we’d love for people to understand where that difference is going, and I think that’s what’s exciting about this concept that we’re exploring, and very often, many people don’t get to see where their philanthropy is going and understand what goes into it. So, some of the proof of patronage pieces that we’ve created, you get to see what the underlying work of art looks like in its current state before restoration, and then you get an NFT that shows you what it looks like after restoration. So, people can not only take pride in this, but you could show this in a virtual environment, for instance, in a digital environment where you can share this story with other people. So, not only is it something that I think people can take pride in and be excited by, but it’s also a way of sharing a story with other people, which we always like to do as storytellers. 

Michelle Choi: 

And to build on the point about patronage. I think to what Mitchell Chan said actually at NF Castle, patrons shape the art that you have, and so, we’re excited that we have some major patrons that will help us decide what the future of crypto art within the cultural institution spaces. The Lobkowiczes first inspired me because they’re the primary patrons of Beethoven. Multiple of his large symphonies are dedicated to the Lobkowicz family, and that tells me that the reason Beethoven had the opportunity and creative liberty to really rewrite musical history was because he had a patron, so he did not have to worry about money. He could focus on the arts, and so, we really believe in the value of patronage and that patronage is an art form as much as the creation of the art itself. So, we’re excited about this.

Laura Shin:

And so, what lessons do you feel you learned about NFTs and how they can be used for this type of work? And you know, I don’t know if there have been cultural institutions that have approached you about, you know, what your learnings have been, but I was curious about that.

Michelle Choi:

I can start with the learnings just from a technology and personal perspective, and then, Will, I’d love for you to talk about the cultural institutions. I think one of the big lessons that my team, Ben, Jake, Will, and I learned is to remember that the space is not going anywhere anytime soon, that there isn’t a huge rush, that, yes, there is this feeling of speed, just like at the beginning the internet, both Pets.com and Amazon.com existed. There are a lot of things that are moving quickly and this temptation to move as quickly as possible, but just like the Lobkowiczes lasted for centuries, we really believe that blockchain enabled technologies will be here to stay, and just like joining the internet in…it doesn’t make any sense to be like, I have to join the internet right now. That concept doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I think that people need to come at their own time, and people need to take their time in learning about this space because it is a long-term durable infrastructure, and so, I think my biggest lesson was to slow down, to enjoy crypto, to work on projects, but do it at a pace so that I will stay in crypto for a long period of time rather than burn myself out. I want to be here for blockchain for decades, not for days, and so, sustainability in the working style was really an important lesson from NF Castle.

William Lobkowicz:

Yeah. I completely agree with that sentiment, and for us as a cultural institution, I think we were pioneers in many ways with the ways we were thinking about this. We’re seeing a lot of institutions now that are looking at ways of tokenizing works of art, or just creating copies of underlying works of art as well as a way of fundraising and keeping things up. You’re seeing this explored by the British Museum. The Hermitage has done an NFT sale. The Mucha Foundation has recently announced that they’ll be doing some pieces, too, and for us what we want to do is think about we’re…I think we’re still very interested in operating in this space, and to look out for more projects that we’ll be doing, but we also want to make sure that we help our fellow cultural institutions in seeing how we can help them and share whatever we have learned from this experience. 

So, the first thing we did is we made all of our conference recordings public and have shared that with the entire world. So, anyone can see that at any time, and just coming up as well, we are also hosting a symposium for Czech cultural institutions so that we can share some of the things that we have learned from this experience, some of the things to be careful of, some of the things that we think are great opportunities in this space, and some of the frontiers of where is some of this technology maybe going because we’re not the only ones in a very difficult situation. We want to acknowledge the other cultural institutions that are struggling and other nonprofits that are trying to find ways to support themselves. So, we’re very happy to share our learnings with more people and continue to help.

Laura Shin:

Okay. That’s so crazy that you just mentioned that the Mucha Foundation is doing NFTs because I am a huge, huge, huge fan of Alphonse Mucha, to the point where, so I went to…there was an exhibit in Prague when I happened to be there, and so, I went there, and at the end I was talking with the person working in the gift shop, and I mentioned, oh, I actually realized later that I had actually seen this same exhibit when it came to New York, and then I said, oh, but you know, I’m such a big fan of Mucha. I’m so glad that I did it, and she said, I can tell you’re a big fan because you pronounced his last name correctly, which is really funny, but anyway. Okay. So, I’m going to have to check those out, but so, now that you’ve had this experience and you’ve done your first NFT collection, what are your next plans for NFTs going forward, you know, for the mission that you have for House of Lobkowicz?

William Lobkowicz:

For now, we’re trying to finish off everything regarding NF Castle, make sure that we’ve developed all of our NFTs properly for all of the people that have been so generous to support us, make sure that we’ve found a mechanism to stay in touch with people and keep up the wonderful community that we’ve created and the wonderful people we’ve met, and then coming into the new year, I think we’re very excited about exploring the frontiers of this technology and seeing what are the other ways we can really be working with this collection to continue in our mission to share the past but create the future? So, in terms of what’s coming next, all I can say is get ready for some wonderful announcements that are going to be coming up. I’m not going to share those just yet, but you should definitely follow us on this journey as we look at those frontiers, but we really are thinking about how to do this properly. As Michelle and I have both said, I think it’s important that we think slowly and carefully about doing this, make sure that we put everything together correctly, and then we’ll be able to create things that won’t just benefit these collections, but I think will have utility for people who actually decide to support and care for these collections in the future. 

Laura Shin:

All right. Well, we will have to see where you go with this. So, where can people learn more about each of you and your work?

Michelle Choi:

The best place to follow all things related to NFTs created by our specific team, so Will, myself, Ben, Jake, and I is on NFCastle.com. We have all of the educational resources we’ve mentioned, the conference recordings, how we’ve built our own NFTs, the NFTs themselves, as well as some remaining collectibles that we are selling in order to fundraise for the collection, all of that can be found on NFCastle.com, as well as we’ve linked our social profiles in the links of this page, and Will and I have all sorts of ideas that are coming, but as Will said, we want to think before we announce them, and so, we’re taking a little bit of time to reflect, to digest the craziness that was 2021, and then we’re really excited to do other types of collaborations between artists and public good projects to demonstrate how crypto can really be used to fundraise across borderless communities in transparent ways for people, for causes that have been affected by COVID or for any other reasons. So, stay tuned.

William Lobkowicz:

And on that subject, there’s a wonderful platform, if we’re speaking to the crypto community, called the Giving Block, which is an incredible organization that has partnered with some nonprofits across the entire space that has made it possible to seamlessly give using crypto in I think over 45 different currencies, and if you’re interested and you can support the Lobkowicz collections there if you’re interested, which is the Friends of the Lobkowicz Collections, but towards the end of the holiday season if you also find any other charity or some nonprofits that you’d like to support, there’s some fantastic initiatives there. So, I highly encourage people to look there as well.

Laura Shin:

Okay. Great. Well, this has been super fun. So, I’ve really just enjoyed chatting with you both so much. Thank you both so much for coming on Unchained. 

Michelle Choi:

Thank you for having us.

William Lobkowicz:

Thank you, Laura.

Michelle Choi:

And thank you for coming to Prague.

Laura Shin:

Oh, yeah. I, honestly, I mean, I’ve just been holed up working on my book, and this was kind of the first major social thing I did in a very, very, very long time, and it was incredibly fun. So, yeah. I really enjoyed it.

Michelle Choi:

Maybe we have to do another. We’ll think about it.

Laura Shin:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, if you have any other events going on in castles, definitely let me know.

William Lobkowicz:

Stay tuned.

Laura Shin:

Okay. Well, thanks to everyone for joining us today. To learn more about Will and Michelle and the House of Lobkowicz and their NFTs, please check out the show notes for this episode. Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin, with help from Anthony Yoon, Daniel Nuss, and Mark Murdock. Thanks for listening.