From Cleopatra to Elizabeth I, from Mary Stuart to Marie Antoinette, the names of great sovereign women evoke powerful myths of grandeur, beauty, and tragedy that nourish our imagination. But what remains of reality behind these narratives? Did Marie Antoinette really say, “Let them eat cake”? Was Cleopatra truly the most beautiful woman of the ancient world? History rarely concerns itself with certainties when it comes to queens: first and foremost, they are images, popular fables, and then objects of artistic fascination. The question then arises: can we truly write an objective history of great sovereign women, when their representations are filtered through ideology, the biases of sources, and the power of art?

History and Art as Ideological Construction

Since the 1970s, feminist criticism has shown that the history of art and political history are anything but neutral. In her foundational essay Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? (1971), Linda Nochlin explains that if women seem absent from dominant narratives, it is not because they did not exist, but because the institutions of memory and knowledge were designed by and for men. Art historians such as Griselda Pollock remind us that women have long been muses and models, rarely creators or active subjects of visual history. Applied to sovereign women, this means that a queen is almost never studied for herself: she is either an ideal or a threat. Art and narratives do not seek to understand who she was, but to fix what she embodied.

This ideological construction is compounded by a concrete obstacle: the scarcity and one-sidedness of sources.

• For Cleopatra, nearly all accounts come from her Roman adversaries (Plutarch, Dio Cassius), whose aim was to justify Octavian’s war against Mark Antony, officially ending the Roman Republic. Cleopatra as enemy of the Roman Republic helped unite citizens. Propaganda against her allowed Octavian to justify seizing power and removing Mark Antony, who was seen as a traitor to his homeland.
• For Mary Stuart, chronicles differ depending on whether they come from Protestants (her political opponents) or Catholics (her supporters), in a context of rivalry for the English throne with her cousin Elizabeth I, compounded by religious conflict between Anglicans and Catholics.
• For Elizabeth I, official portraits were produced as instruments of propaganda: the famous Armada Portrait shows an invincible sovereign, far removed from real political dilemmas. Even when we have direct sources, their reception is biased. The correspondence between Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I reveals respect and even affection. But this female voice has been largely obscured in favor of the Manichaean narrative of a deadly rivalry, a narrative that served military and religious rivalries for the English throne.

Thus, historical objectivity seems illusory, but not entirely out of reach: it requires cross-referencing sources (archives, iconography, archaeological data) and, above all, adopting a critical stance that accepts recognizing areas of uncertainty. Writing the history of sovereign women also means accepting to say: “we do not know.”

The Archetypes Imposed on Sovereign Women

Rather than analyzing queens as complex individuals, historical and artistic narratives have classified them into archetypes. These categories reassure some (men) by simplifying, but distort reality.

Roman propaganda forged the image of Cleopatra as a queen-prostitute, using her charms to seduce Caesar and then Mark Antony in order to retain power. The implicit idea is clear: a woman cannot rule alone, especially not over a power like Egypt.

“By her charms, by her last favors, Cleopatra obtained from Caesar the kingdom and the death of Ptolemy. She was so passionate that she often prostituted herself; so beautiful that many men bought their existence for the favor of one of her nights.” Aurelius Victor, De viris illustribus urbis Romae, LXXXVI.

Orientalist art of the 19th century, followed by Hollywood in the blockbuster Cleopatra (1963) with Elizabeth Taylor, amplified this vision: Cleopatra became an object of artistic fantasy, more muse than sovereign. Her beauty and tragic death (suicide by asp bite, according to legend) are central, her political action erased. Yet reality is quite different. Here is a brief but more faithful portrait of the queen: Cleopatra was a polyglot, speaking nine languages, and the only one in her dynasty to learn and speak Egyptian fluently. A skilled diplomat, she managed to stay on the throne (despite coups by her brother, with whom she shared the throne at barely twenty years old) by forming an alliance with Julius Caesar, convincing him that it was better to have Egypt as an ally than as a colony. She was an economic strategist, restoring the value of the tetradrachm (Egyptian currency), whose value had been divided by three under her father’s reign. She innovated by displaying the fiduciary value on the reverse of bronze coins, thus curbing the inflation of bronze relative to silver. Cleopatra also claimed her pharaonic heritage, presenting herself as the embodiment of a cosmopolitan Egypt, changing her name from Cleopatra Thea Philopator (“Cleopatra, goddess who loves her father”) to Thea Neotera Philopatris (“new goddess who loves her homeland”).

Mary Stuart, for her part, embodies the archetype of the martyr queen. A Catholic queen facing a Protestant Scotland, she is seen either as a saintly victim of her faith (beheaded after a botched execution, the executioner having to strike three times) or as a traitor conspiring against England. Stefan Zweig’s literary biography Mary Stuart (1935) feeds this romantic myth: a queen intellectually brilliant, a pupil and muse of Ronsard, a recognized musician, but with a tragic destiny, sacrificed in struggles for power. Behind this image lies a more prosaic reality: a sovereign caught in religious and dynastic struggles, forced to abandon her one-year-old son, whose fate was less chosen than endured.In contrast, Elizabeth I illustrates the archetype of the “un-womanly woman.” To reign, she chose to marry herself symbolically to her kingdom and to embody the myth of the “Virgin Queen.” This political strategy shocked 16th-century society: to refuse motherhood was to refuse the very essence of femininity according to the mentality of the time. She is credited with numerous love affairs, now almost confirmed, including one with her childhood friend Robert Dudley, presented as the love of her life. This masculinization fuels rumors: some claim she was not really a woman. Articles (such as La vérité choquante sur le corps d’Élisabeth Ire que la famille royale a tenté d’effacer., on an unreliable site) present unverified hypotheses as top-secret royal facts just revealed to the public, and give into the sensational.

Portrait of Elizabeth I of England, the Armada Portrait, Anonymous, circa 1588, oil on panel, 110,5×127 cm, Woburn Abbey.

In France, Catherine de Medici is portrayed as a virago, manipulative and cruel, held responsible for the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. A woman who loved her husband, who preferred her Diane de Poitiers, she was the queen mother who ruled in place of her three sons, who died one after the other without issue. A devotee of astrology, a science very much in vogue at the time, she was accused of frequently resorting to black magic and the services of Nostradamus. When a woman wields power, it must be explained: either she is not a “real” woman, or she derives her power from black magic.

Finally, Marie Antoinette embodies the archetype of the frivolous and spendthrift queen. Nicknamed “Madame Deficit,” she crystallizes popular hatred. Her supposed frivolity is summed up in the famous phrase “If they have no bread, let them eat cake” during the Women’s March on Versailles—a phrase she never actually uttered. Yet history reveals another facet: a young woman sent as a teenager to a foreign court, a patron of the arts, a mother devoted to her children. Her personal expenses were modest compared to the kingdom’s structural debts, but the archetype of a frivolous and guilty queen was more politically effective in the revolutionary context.

Attempts at Control and Contemporary Reception 

Some sovereign women tried to control their image. Elizabeth I, through her official portraits (Rainbow Portrait, Armada Portrait), projected an image of power and chastity (which she was forced to reaffirm in the face of her detractors). Isabella of Castile based her legitimacy on piety and Spanish unity—a valued register during the Reconquista (1492, reconquest and reunification of Spain against the Byzantine Empire). Christina of Sweden, finally, blurred the lines by voluntarily abdicating and reinventing herself as a European intellectual during the Enlightenment, writing her memoirs to shape her posterity. But these strategies are rarely entirely effective: public opinion and art reinterpret according to the narrative serving best the country, with a hint of sexism in the process.Art does not seek to tell the truth or bear witness to historical reality, but to produce images. Paintings, sculptures, and then films fix archetypes. The danger arises when these visual myths are taken for truths. Hollywood is a striking example: Cleopatra (1963) or Mary Queen of Scots (2018) emphasize glamour and romance, reducing queens to love intrigues and spectacular dramas (in the Latin sense: things to be seen). Their image is all the more cinematic because both queens met tragic ends: Cleopatra committed suicide in 30 BCE following the defeat at Actium, to avoid becoming a war trophy of the Roman army; Mary Stuart, condemned to death for treason, saw her executioner take three attempts to succeed in beheading her.

Poster of the Cleopatra movie, 1963, after Howard Terpning, public domain.

Recent academic research seeks to correct these biases. Historians such as Stacy Schiff (Cleopatra: A Life, 2010), Olivier Gaudrfroy (Cléopâtre l’immortelle, de l’Histoire à la légende, 2017), or specialists like R. Knecht (on Catherine de Medici) offer portraits stripped of clichés. We rediscover Cleopatra the strategist, Catherine de Medici the patron, Marie Antoinette the political figure. However, the problem persists. Contemporary female politicians are subject to similar mechanisms: Hillary Clinton is judged too harsh, Ségolène Royal is criticized for her dresses, Angela Merkel is reduced to her coldness. Moreover, women are regularly referred to by their first name, unlike their male counterparts, who are referred to by their surname (Kamala vs. Trump, for example).

Yesterday as today, female power continues to be perceived through and sometimes reduced to archetypes and sexist formulations.

Cleopatra, Mary Stuart, Elizabeth I, Marie Antoinette: all have been reduced to archetypes, the seductress, the victim, the virago, the frivolous woman, rather than being considered as complex individuals. If you wish to discover lesser-known queens, you can look into Zenobia of Palmyra or Boudicca, queens who opposed the Roman Empire, though we have little reliable (non-Roman) information about them.

Can we achieve total objectivity? Probably not, but we can approach it by cross-referencing sources, adopting a critical and gendered reading, and accepting the gray areas of history. Our contemporary responsibility is to distinguish between myth and historical reality and to ask ourselves, finally: in our media and current representations, do we draw a faithful mirror of women in power, or do we simply manufacture new myths ?

Written by Nine Letourmy

Strikers protesting for better work conditions, higher wages and more workers, and against the obsolescence of the building and the LNR Project (© LeParisien LP/Ahmed Benazzouz)

On Monday, February 16, an assembly of more than 200 employees of the Louvre Museum voted to go on strike, making it impossible to fully open the museum. Launched in mid-December, the strike movement at the Louvre has taken on an unprecedented scale over the past few weeks for France’s largest museum institution. On several occasions since December, the museum has been forced to close entirely to the public as a direct result of the mobilisation of a significant share of its workforce. On January 26, several hundred employees gathered in a general assembly at the auditorium voted to renew the strike notice initially filed on December 8 by an inter-union coalition bringing together CFDT, CGT and SUD Culture, marking a new phase in what has become a prolonged social conflict.

According to the trade unions, the mobilisation originated in a spontaneous movement by non-unionised staff members in June 2025, accompanied by the drafting of a list of grievances that, in their view, received no adequate response from management. The jewellery theft that occurred in October 2025 is described as a further shock to the institution’s social fabric, as it exposed long-standing shortcomings in security, investment priorities and staffing management. Since then, the inter-union group says it has been closely monitoring the conflict, consulting employees every week on whether to continue the strike. The participation of staff from the Denon wing — which houses the Mona Lisa — led to the museum’s complete closure on several occasions, an outcome union representative has described as historic.

The various union statements converge in portraying an institution facing deep structural difficulties. The unions denounce working conditions they consider increasingly degraded, an ageing building whose deterioration has led to repeated technical failures, and a chronic lack of staff. According to them, these constraints result in the daily closure of galleries beyond the forecasts of the guaranteed opening plan, hindered visitor circulation and limited access to the collections, to the point that a visit to the museum has been described as an “obstacle course” by the workers. Internally, staff report a steadily increasing workload, growing tensions in human resources management and contradictory directives that they say are incompatible with the calm exercise of a public service mission.

The social tensions unfolding at the Musée du Louvre also coincide with uncertainty surrounding one of the institution’s most ambitious transformation projects. Scheduled to meet on February 11, the jury of the international architecture competition for the “Louvre–Grande Colonnade” project — part of the broader Louvre–Nouvelle Renaissance plan — ultimately postponed its deliberations to an unspecified later date. Officially justified by the need for further analysis of the proposals, the delay comes amid a series of crises affecting the museum, including security failures, infrastructure damage and ongoing labour disputes. Announced in January 2025 by President Emmanuel Macron, the project aims to redesign the museum’s eastern wing to improve visitor flow and access to the Mona Lisa, with an estimated cost of more than one billion euros. While the museum’s management insists on the project’s strategic importance, trade unions — already mobilised against what they describe as deteriorating working conditions and fragile funding priorities — have openly opposed the redevelopment, arguing that it diverts attention and resources from more urgent issues related to safety, staffing and day-to-day operations. The postponement of the jury meeting has therefore been interpreted by union representatives as a signal of broader instability, reinforcing their criticism of governance choices at a time when the institution is already under strain.

At the heart of the demands are issues related to the institution’s governance, site safety and security, project and pricing policies, the creation of permanent civil service positions, the stabilisation of contract staff, salary increases and the overall improvement of working and visiting conditions. These demands are also part of a broader reflection on the museum’s economic model, a large share of whose budget now relies on its own revenues, fuelling, according to the unions, tensions between financial imperatives and staff working conditions.

Asked about the situation, Culture Minister Rachida Dati publicly acknowledged on January 13, during an interview on Europe 1, the existence of a “governance problem” at the head of the institution, while announcing forthcoming decisions without specifying their nature. Despite several rounds of negotiations with management and supervisory authorities, the unions believe that the responses provided so far remain insufficient. Staff members, who say they are deeply attached to the Louvre, now describe their mobilisation as a major warning about the future of the institution’s social and cultural model and, more broadly, that of France’s major public cultural institutions.

On Tuesday, January 28, 2025, Emmanuel Macron announced the future transformation of the Louvre Museum. ©Twitter/©Elysee

The state of public museums in France

Beyond the Louvre alone, the strike movement reflects a broader context of weakening across France’s public museums, which have been facing persistent structural pressure for several years. Staff point to rising workloads, increasingly tight schedules and enforced versatility, often within ageing buildings whose maintenance has been significantly delayed. Deteriorating infrastructure, regularly reported by employees, raises concerns about safety, the preservation of artworks and working conditions alike, while budgetary trade-offs increasingly favour self-generated revenues, high-profile events or profitability at the expense of day-to-day operations.

In this context, pricing policies, the growing number of exceptions and discounts, and pressure to increase visitor capacity are widely perceived by staff as contributing to the erosion of public service quality. These dynamics create a widening gap between the museums’ heritage and educational missions and the resources actually allocated to fulfil them. Added to this are recurring human resources issues: increased reliance on precarious contracts, limited career prospects, declining purchasing power and a widespread feeling of exclusion from strategic decision-making.

The demands set out in union statements — including the creation of permanent positions, salary increases, improved working conditions, recognition of staff expertise and clearer governance — echo a malaise shared across many public cultural institutions. Employees warn of the risk of a gradual erosion of the French museum model as an accessible public service grounded in professional expertise.

This situation can partly be explained by changes in the economic model of public museums, marked by growing dependence on own-source funding such as ticket sales, sponsorship, space rentals and blockbuster exhibitions, at a time when state and local authority funding is stagnating or declining. Under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture, many institutions are encouraged to boost revenues and attendance, resulting in intensified activity without corresponding increases in human or technical resources. For staff, this translates into mounting daily pressure: denser visitor flows, extended opening hours and increased reliance on evening, weekend and public holiday work, often seen as necessary to offset declining purchasing power.

Material working conditions remain another major point of tension. Much of France’s museum heritage is housed in historic buildings requiring heavy and continuous investment to maintain and upgrade. Staff regularly warn of technical failures, safety concerns and spaces ill-suited to mass tourism, all of which complicate their work. These issues affect visitors through partial gallery closures, restricted circulation and degraded visiting conditions, while also exposing staff to heightened risks and a growing sense of lost purpose.

Human resources challenges are equally central to the discontent expressed. The increasing use of contract staff, the multiplication of employment statuses and the precarisation of certain professions undermine service continuity and fuel feelings of inequality within teams. Employees denounce limited career progression, insufficient recognition of their skills and management practices perceived as increasingly top-down, leaving little room for dialogue or consultation. In this context, governance has become a key issue, with unions calling for staff to be more closely involved in strategic decisions shaping the future of museums.

The Louvre Museum with its famous glass pyramid, built between 1985 and 1989 (image libre de droit)

What lies ahead?

The outcome of the conflict at the Louvre, as in other public museums, will largely depend on the ability of public authorities and institutional leadership to translate widely shared diagnoses into structural decisions. In the short term, targeted measures — temporary staff reinforcements, budgetary shifts in favour of safety and maintenance, and commitments on certain pay demands — could help ease tensions and restore more stable operations. However, without a long-term strategy, such measures risk falling short of addressing the depth of the problems identified.

In the medium term, the economic and social model of major public museums appears to be a central issue. The growing reliance on own revenues and mass attendance, often framed as unavoidable, could be reassessed in light of its impact on working conditions, conservation standards and the quality of visitor reception. A redefinition of priorities — refocusing on core public service missions, sustained investment in buildings and staff, and a better alignment between cultural ambitions and available resources — is one scenario frequently discussed by sector stakeholders.

Change may also require a renewal of governance practices. Recent social movements reveal strong expectations for greater recognition of staff expertise and for more meaningful social dialogue upstream of major strategic decisions. Closer staff involvement in shaping institutional choices could help rebuild trust and prevent recurring crises, while ensuring that stated objectives better reflect on-the-ground realities.

Finally, beyond the Louvre itself, these mobilisations may influence broader national cultural policy orientations. Under the authority of the Ministry of Culture, the State faces the challenge of clarifying its role and level of commitment in financing and regulating major heritage institutions. Without structural responses, social conflicts may multiply, turning such movements into lasting warning signals about the sustainability of the French cultural model. Conversely, a clear policy shift could open the way to a more balanced equilibrium between international prestige, accessibility and working conditions.

The debates raised by the strike at the Louvre Museum, and by similar movements in other institutions, go beyond the social dimension alone. They raise questions about the very future of cultural policy in France. As several observers point out, persistent underinvestment in public museums, combined with growing reliance on their own revenues, could gradually weaken their ability to fulfil their public service missions. In the long run, the preservation, study and transmission of cultural heritage could increasingly fall to private actors, foundations or institutions whose operations are shaped by profitability requirements, sponsorship strategies or audience-driven objectives.

Private museums and independent cultural initiatives undoubtedly contribute to enriching and diversifying the cultural landscape. However, their goals do not necessarily align with the long-term imperatives of conservation, research and universal access. Public museums have historically played a central role in preserving collections regardless of their immediate appeal, ensuring affordable access to knowledge and maintaining scholarly independence from commercial pressures. The concerns expressed by museum staff therefore resonate as a warning signal: that heritage management could gradually shift towards a market-driven logic.

Ultimately, the current mobilisations can also be read as a call to reaffirm public responsibility for cultural preservation at a time when the balance between public service and economic constraints appears more fragile than ever.

Written by Gabriel Maget

Sources:
CGT Etat : « Caisse de grève pour les agent·es du musée du Louvre (Intersyndicale Culture) »
Cfdt : « Les salariés du Louvre en grève pour leurs conditions de travail »
France info : « Nouvelle journée de grève au musée du Louvre, qui n’ouvre que partiellement »
Le Monde : « Grève au Louvre : nouvelle journée de mobilisation, le musée n’est que partiellement ouvert ce lundi »
Connaissance des arts : « Louvre : entre crises à répétition et polémiques, nouveau coup dur pour le musée et son grand projet de réaménagement à 1,15 milliard d’euros »

Beeple (Mike Winkelmann), Everydays: The First 5000 Days, 2021. NFT. ©Beeple

From Speculation to Infrastructure: The Genesis of a Regulated Cultural Web 3.0

The year 2021 was marked by a sudden and unprecedented explosion in the field of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). This period was characterized by a level of speculative euphoria that remains difficult to fully comprehend today, highlighted by extraordinary records in the world of public auctions. One cannot discuss this era without mentioning the seminal work of the artist known as Beeple, which was successfully transacted for a sum exceeding 69 million dollars through the auction house Christie’s. However, when we look at the current landscape, a fundamental question arises : how many individuals within our contemporary society remain truly informed about the nature and purpose of NFTs today ?

The reason for this collective distancing is that, starting in 2022, this technology underwent what appeared to be a total and absolute collapse. Transaction volumes did not merely decline; they decreased by more than 90%, a downturn so severe that it led many observers to contemplate the fundamental incompatibility of the cultural and artistic sectors with the technological framework of Web 3.0.

Nevertheless, with several years of hindsight and perspective, we are now in a position to assert that this volatile phase was, in fact, a strategic necessity. It served as a critical testing ground to probe the ultimate limits of the technology and to act as a filtering mechanism designed to maximize its eventual utility. Projects that were fundamentally devoid of intrinsic meaning or long-term value were systematically discarded. This process made way for what major industry reports now describe as a state of “irreversible institutionalization.” We have moved past the era of speculating on digital images; the current focus has shifted toward utilizing blockchain technology for tangible assets. This shift allows for the construction of the legal and technological foundations that are essential for the establishment of a market that is both stable and fundamentally healthy.

For those individuals who may not be entirely familiar with the intricacies of blockchain technology, one can simply visualize it as a vast, decentralized ledger. This ledger systematically catalogs all information in a manner that is entirely transparent, accessible to every participant, and characterized by the absolute impossibility of modification or alteration. Within the specific confines of the cultural world, blockchain provides several critical utilities:

1. Total Traceability: It enables a system of comprehensive traceability that functions as an immutable digital certificate of authenticity. Every time a specific work of art undergoes a change in ownership, this information is indelibly recorded within the blockchain.
2. Automated Procedures: It facilitates the implementation of automated procedures, which effectively eliminates the burden of administrative complications and removes the necessity for various intermediaries.
3. Tokenization of Rights: It allows for the transformation of a specific right (here, for instance, we can utilize the ownership right of a physical painting as an example) into a digital asset known as a token. It is specifically through this process of tokenization that a single work of art can be subdivided into thousands of distinct shares, all while providing a guarantee that each individual share remains unique and entirely secure.

Since the beginning of the current year, the global regulatory environment appears to be shifting strongly in favor of digital frameworks, thereby ensuring the existence of a healthy market, even for the cultural sphere. Within the European context, the official entry into force of MiCAR (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) has fundamentally altered the entire operational system for cultural entrepreneurs. Whereas there was a profound sense of mistrust regarding tokens, viewing them as potential « scams » (an opinion I myself held only a few months ago), the new cultural projects being launched in nations such as France or Belgium can now be disseminated across the European Union with a robust sense of legal security.

Furthermore, companies are now mandated to demonstrate a high degree of transparent marketing, a requirement that effectively marginalizes and discards surrealistic promises of profit. Consequently, those individuals who choose to provide financing for cultural projects are fully aware that they are engaging in a long-term investment. This type of investment closely resembles traditional patronage, even though it retains the potential to generate a financial capital gain. Finally, the implementation of the DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) imposes strict requirements on financial institutions and their various partners to guarantee a high level of resistance against cyberattacks. This factor, while complex, addresses what was previously a significant deterrent for those wishing to enter this innovative space.

Currently, however, what appears to be capturing the attention of the most serious investors is no longer merely the digital realm in isolation, but rather the tokenization of Real World Assets (RWA). This specific phenomenon seems to carry significant and far-reaching strategic opportunities for both commercial enterprises and public cultural institutions by digitally fragmenting the legal ownership of physical cultural works.

We are therefore justified in questioning why this particular subject is so inherently interesting and why it represents such a critical strategic stake. A work of art, regardless of its specific nature or medium, can now be subdivided into several thousand digital shares. In an era marked by a significant and persistent decline in public subsidies, cultural institutions are no longer forced into a position where they must separate themselves from their heritage or struggle to find a single, massive donor. Instead, they have the capability to tokenize their real assets by offering fractional investment opportunities to the general public. This development implies several transformative consequences:

1. A significantly larger number of individuals can now choose to participate in the financing of a work of art, which serves to diversify the available sources of funding.
2. The art market, which has historically been characterized by its difficulty in sales and the resulting liquidity problems for cultural enterprises, can now benefit from transactions that are nearly instantaneous. This allows for the maintenance of a more robust and substantial cash flow.
3. As previously established, the blockchain remains accessible to all participants. Once information has been entered into the system, it cannot be modified. It thus becomes an indispensable tool for ensuring the absolute traceability of artworks and for guaranteeing a high level of ethical standards.

Nevertheless, the successful democratization of this model presupposes a majority adoption by the community of collectors, who are often perceived as being detached from new technological developments. However, while it is true that senior collectors demonstrate an interest in digital assets of only approximately 14%, we are on the precipice of an immense transfer of wealth toward the younger generations. Approximately 50% of these new, incoming collectors are deeply interested in fractional investment models. They have understood that blockchain is not merely a technological artifact, but rather the essential machinery of a new cultural market that is inherently more equitable and transparent.

From Patronage to Investment

The fundamental landscape of cultural financing is currently undergoing a complete and total transformation. We have all been educated under the premise that the support for culture rested upon two essential pillars: public subsidies and traditional philanthropy. In both of these historical cases, the underlying assumption was that one had to accept « losing » money for a symbolic purpose or a fiscal benefit. This is no longer the reality of the situation, thanks to the emerging possibility of realizing fractional cultural investments.

One might be inclined to think that this specific approach bears a resemblance to crowdfunding. Indeed, crowdfunding effectively initiated the concept of public participation in specific projects. However, it presents clear limitations insofar as there is generally no financial return on investment for the participant, despite the presence of various symbolic rewards. The tokenization of real-world assets fundamentally changes this equation. This is because the holder of a token possesses a genuine financial share of the underlying asset. This reality is significantly more interesting for professional investors and allows for a substantial increase in market liquidity. If an investor chooses to purchase a token at the start of a week and subsequently wishes to resell it by the end of that same week, this is entirely possible. It is a financial placement in the truest sense.

This democratization of financing does not concern art alone; it also encompasses high-value assets across various sectors. Nonetheless, for cultural organizations, this represents a strategic stake in governance, particularly regarding the reduction of their long-standing dependence on public subsidies.

Furthermore, the sheer magnitude of the change that is currently unfolding is projected to be immense. The market for the tokenization of illiquid assets is expected to reach a value of 16 trillion dollars by the year 2030. According to the Boston Consulting Group, this would represent approximately 10% of the total global GDP. These projections serve to confirm that the cultural sector is simply aligning itself with the broader movement of the global economy. The historical barriers to blockchain accessibility are currently falling away due to the implementation of new regulations. Consequently, what was previously reserved for a narrow financial elite (such as the ownership of masterpieces) is simply becoming an accessible savings product. These products may very well offer a financial yield that is superior to the historically low rates currently provided by traditional banks. This does not, by any means, signify the end of philanthropy or human generosity; rather, it signifies that we are arriving in an era where culture, which was previously perceived merely as an expense or a deficit, can now generate true financial value.

Case Study: From Pioneer Project Towards a New Standardization?

James Ensor, The Carnival of Binche, 1924. ©KMSKA (Royal Museum of Fine Art Antwerp)

Now that the theoretical foundations of this evolution have been established, we can turn our attention to a concrete case study: that of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA). This model is widely considered to be a pioneer in the field, although it must be noted that it remains an exceptional case within an environment that is currently in a state of profound mutation.

In the year 2022, the KMSKA became the first major museum in Europe to financially fragment a work of art: The Carnival of Binche by James Ensor. This operation was conducted with the specialized assistance of the Rubey platform. Through this mechanism, investors were able to purchase Art Security Tokens, which successfully raised 1.4 million euros from 250 interested participants. The entry price, or « ticket, » was set at 150 euros, making the investment significantly more affordable for the general public. This allowed for the creation of a dedicated community of partners. Consequently, the museum was able to secure a long-term loan of the work, which had previously belonged to private collections — an achievement that would undoubtedly have been difficult, if not impossible, through traditional financing channels.

However, it is critically important to observe that the Antwerp model does not yet represent the industry norm due to several persistent hurdles:

1. The Principle of Inalienability: This legal principle governing public collections asserts that works acquired by the State belong to the public domain. The State is not the « owner » in a private sense, but rather the custodian, and therefore cannot sell or give away these artworks.
2. Implementation of Regulations: Policies and regulations are only just beginning to be implemented, which leaves a perception of greater risk for those cultural institutions that are not yet prepared to take this technological leap.
3. DORA Act Constraints: The requirements of the DORA Act imply the need for massive financial investments to protect against cyberattacks, an expense that the majority of cultural institutions cannot currently afford.

While the tokenization of tangible assets remains complex, institutions are nonetheless attempting to implement strategic technological measures. One notable example is the Musée d’Orsay, which, since 2024, has utilized blockchain technology to generate “Digital Souvenirs.” This specific initiative allows for the identification of the visitor as a member of a community rather than an anonymous passerby, with the ultimate goal of fostering long-term loyalty.

Cultural institutions are beginning to understand that blockchain is not merely a simple experiment, but rather the essential infrastructure for the projects of tomorrow. It is a core component of a new global financial standard that is both transparent and highly regulated. Evolving alongside technology is not merely a question of image for cultural organizations that are generally perceived as being archaic; it is a genuine necessity for ensuring their long-term sovereignty. The tokenization of real-world assets is a vital tool for achieving financial independence by transforming traditional donations into structured investments. It also allows for the attraction of a new demographic of young investors who are deeply interested in transparency and the fractional nature of financing.

The transition is certainly complex, and perhaps even impossible to implement for smaller organizations, at least for the time being. The challenges regarding widespread adoption are numerous and span legal, technical, and cultural dimensions. Accepting the idea that our collective heritage can be fractioned or managed as a financial asset necessitates a profound change in mentality within the very heart of museum directorates. Nevertheless, profound changes always require time and a strong collective will.

The goal is certainly not to replace the profound emotion we experience when standing before works of art with cold algorithms, but rather to utilize these algorithms to facilitate the meeting between the public and the works themselves. In a world where the art market is often polarized and reserved for a narrow elite, despite various attempts at democratization, it is fundamentally important to make our collections accessible to the greatest number of people. If the situation appears somewhat unclear today, I am firmly persuaded that the cultural institutions that will survive future budget cuts and political shifts will be those that have successfully managed to diversify their operations through the strategic use of technology.

Written by Léana Seguin

Glossary:

Blockchain: A secure, decentralized technology for storing and transmitting information. It operates
as a shared digital database where content is verified and secured through cryptographic methods.
Once validated by network users, the information becomes permanent, transparent, and immutable.
DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act): An EU regulation imposing strict digital resilience standards on financial institutions and their partners to ensure systems remain secure against cyberattacks.
Inalienability: A legal principle stating that works in public collections belong to the public domain. They cannot be transferred, sold, or donated by the State, which serves as their custodian.
MiCAR (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation): The European Union’s legislative framework designed to regulate digital asset markets, providing legal certainty for issuers and enhanced protection for investors.
NFT (Non-Fungible Token): A unique, non-interchangeable digital token issued on a blockchain, used to certify the ownership and authenticity of a digital or physical asset.
RWA (Real World Assets): Physical assets (such as real estate or artwork) that are digitized on the blockchain to facilitate exchange, management, and fractional ownership.
Tokenization: The process of converting real-world rights (such as ownership) into digital tokens on a blockchain, enabling an asset to be split into multiple financial shares.

Bibliography:

Boston Consulting Group. (2022). Relevance of on-chain asset tokenization in ‘crypto winter’. BCG Global. https://www.bcg.com/publications/2022/relevance-of-on-chain-asset-tokenization
Deloitte, & ArtTactic. (2023). Art & Finance Report 2023 (8ème éd.). Deloitte Tax & Consulting SARL.
Musée d’Orsay. (2023, 19 septembre). Le musée d’Orsay s’allie à la Fondation Tezos pour explorer les applications de la blockchain. Communiqué de presse. https://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/actualites/le-musee-dorsay-sallie-la-fondation-tezos
Musée Royal des Beaux-Arts d’Anvers (KMSKA). (2022). Become a co-owner of a Masterpiece: James Ensor – Le Carnaval de Binche. https://kmska.be/en/become-co-owner-masterpiece
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). (2026). PwC Global Crypto Regulation Report 2026: Navigating the Global Landscape (4ème éd.). PwC LLP. https://www.pwc.de/de/unterlagen/pwc-global-crypto-regulation-report-2026.pdf
Rubey. (2022). Case Study: Art Security Tokens for the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp. https://www.rubey.be/casestudies

We often come across the expression male gaze on the internet and in the media. It refers to the act, in arts, of depicting women and the world from a heterosexual male perspective. This perspective represents women as sexual objects, for the pleasure of the heterosexual male audience. The concept of male gaze was first articulated by the British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in her 1975 essay, « Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema ». This theory also refers to historical precedents. For example, in the European oil paintings from the Renaissance period, the female body was, most of the time, idealized and presented from a voyeuristic male perspective. However, the concept of male perspective had already been studied a long time before 1975.

In fact, in 1882, the impressionist painter Édouard Manet presented his new painting Un bar aux Folies Bergère (in English: Bar at the Folies Bergère), which is an analysis of male perspective in arts, and more generally, in society. In 1979, the photographer Jeff Wall creates the picture Picture for Women as an answer to Manet’s painting. This conversation between Manet’s work and Jeff Wall’s one shows us how male perspective has been discussed through the last centuries.

Presentation of A bar at the Folies Bergère

The Un bar aux Folies Bergère painting represents the Folies Bergère concert hall, an iconic place of leisure in Paris that has always been famous for its shows and parties. At the center of the picture we can see a woman behind a bar, who is clearly the bartender. We can easily notice her absent and suffering stare, which can be surprising for a barmaid. She is surrounded by alcohol, drinks and other leisure objects such as fruits and flowers. Behind the barmaid is a mirror. The particularity of this painting is that, except for the forefront – which are the barmaid and the bar – the rest of the painting is the mirror. Which means that most of what we see is a reflection of what is actually in front of the barmaid. 

The purpose of the mirror is to give us depth and context about the passive and jaded attitude of the barmaid. In the reflection, we can see a typical scene of a party. In fact, the room is really crowded, everyone is well-dressed and some people are drinking. We can even see the feet of an acrobat. But the most important thing is the reflection of the barmaid’s back, and we can notice that she is actually talking to a man standing in front of her. The mirror allows us to understand that the barmaid has this attitude because of the man she is talking to. She is looking at him. This makes us – the viewer – as if we were this man. Who is he? What is going on?

This picture, as many others, is staged. It was photographed in a borrowed studio in Vancouver in winter 1979 and printed on two separate pieces of film which are joined using clear tape. We can notice a cinematic dimension, due to the choice of lights and colors.

On the left slide of the foreground, we can see a woman laying her hands on a table. She has the same blue eyes as the barmaid in Manet’s painting. Her outfit also reminds us of the protagonist of Manet’s painting because of the grey/purple color of her shirt. On the right side of the middle ground, there is Jeff Wall himself. But this is actually a mirror reflection of him taking a picture of her. In fact, like in Manet’s work, there is a mirror behind the woman. 

Jeff Wall, indeed, used the same mechanism chosen by Manet. In fact, except the woman and the table, everything that is shown in the picture is a reflection given by the mirror. As Édouard Manet did, Jeff Wall used the mirror to give depth and context to his painting. What is reflected here is Wall’s studio. The scene is surprisingly empty, except for the big camera in the middle of the room, taking the picture of the woman. We can assume that Jeff Wall and the woman are looking at each other, but through the mirror.

Everything except the woman and the table is quite dark and a little blurred. The only sources of light are the lamps and the woman. This also reminds us of the Un bar aux Folies-Bergère painting. Another mechanism that reminds us of Manet’s painting is the fact that the first thing that we notice is the female character, while the male character is darker and blurred.

Analysis of Picture for Women

This picture can firstly be seen as a representation of Jeff Wall’s process in creating his pictures. This would explain why the camera is in the middle, meaning that the camera symbolizes the photographer’s process. In this case, Wall would give us here an occasion to look at what is “behind the scenes”. There is a voyeuristic dimension here, as if we weren’t supposed to see what is going on. Furthermore, the light shed on the woman can be interpreted as if she was the future work of art. The question suggested is, what is behind a work of art?

But let’s go more in depth of what is going on in this picture. It is made by a complex web of viewpoints. Jeff Wall has realized, with his work, a sort of deconstruction of Manet’s painting. The quest of male pleasure here is shown in its whole process. 

The point of view in Manet’s picture is a male one, such as in Wall’s picture. Jeff Wall is clearly revealing to us that artists actually choose, most of the time, to take the male’s point of view. And it is not just about taking heterosexual male’s point of view, but also about pleasing them by sexualising women’s bodies. Picture for Women comes as a sort of confirmation: yes, the point of view of Manet’s picture – and most of artworks – is a male’s one, there is indeed a male behind the camera, or holding the brush.

The power relationship between the male artist and the female model is particularly shown by the passivity of the woman. This confirms us that the barmaid was passive. The staging dimension of Wall’s picture suggests that women are often forced to play a role to please heterosexual men’s perspectives. In his empty studio, Wall takes away all the party scenography. The people, the acrobats, the alcohol, are all out. The fake happiness is gone and everything is quiet. We can also notice the quietness by the fact that the woman is holding her hands. This quietness and emptiness permits us to reveal completely the mechanism of how a work of art is made. 

Tate Modern exhibited Picture for Women during the Jeff Wall Photographs 1978-2004 exhibition, from 2005 to 2006. As the exhibition’s text explained, the issues of the male gaze, and more specifically the power relationship between the male artist and the female model, such as the viewer’s role, are implicit in Manet’s painting ; but Jeff Wall chose to update the theme by positioning the camera at the center of the work. In this way, he captures the act of grasping the image, through the scene reflected in the mirror, and, at the same time, looks straight at us.

Jeff Wall invites us to find out the creation process in every artwork that we see. He suggests asking ourselves “What is the point of view here?”, “Is there a male gaze?”. Most of the time, the answer is, yes. Édouard Manet and Jeff Wall show us that the male gaze is the most common point of view of what we see, and most of the time we aren’t even aware of it. Male gaze is an unconscious norm. To conclude, I would like to invite you to go further and ask yourself how the male gaze in arts influences our way of behaving in society. Do we dress, talk, act as we want to, or as we are told to ? 

Written by Lucia Pelos