Not as a meme — as a marker. A shorthand for institutional canonization. The moment digital-native art stops being “observed” and starts being historicized.

That moment is no longer theoretical.

MoMA has acquired 8 CryptoPunks and a complete set of 8 Chromie Squiggles for its permanent collection.

Let that land.

Cozomo de’ Medici

@CozomoMedici

The moment we’ve been building toward has arrived.

MoMA (@MuseumModernArt) has acquired 8 CryptoPunks and a complete set of 8 Chromie Squiggles.

Works generously donated by
@larvalabs, @kukulabanze, @Rhyd0n, @jdh, @VonMises14, @ArtOnBlockchain, @squiggleDAO, @gmoneyNFT,

1,513

10:43 PM • Dec 19, 2025

No hype cycle. No flashy announcement. No institutional “experiment.”

Just structure.

Ryan Zurrer joining the MoMA board was the quiet tell. A cryptonative collector inside one of the most conservative canon-making machines in modern art.

From there, the question was never if MoMA would get it — but how long institutions take to move once they do.

CryptoPunks and Squiggles didn’t need defending. They needed positioning.

And that positioning is now permanent.

This wasn’t one collector pushing an agenda.

This was a collective donation — cryptonative collectors contributing works from their personal collections to a public institution.

That matters.

Movements don’t enter museums through ego.
They enter through consensus.

Punks and Squiggles weren’t chosen because they’re expensive. They were chosen because they’re foundational. Early. Minimal. On-chain. Instantly legible. Impossible to unsee once understood.

This is MoMA saying: this is where the lineage starts.

If you were here in ’21 or earlier — minting, collecting, writing, arguing, building — this moment didn’t arrive for you.

It arrived because of you.

Institutions don’t discover movements. They ratify them after the fact. The work was already done.

MoMA is just catching up — and doing it properly.

This is not the finish line. It’s the green light.

• Node Foundation opens in January with a major CryptoPunks exhibition.

• MoMA exhibitions follow acquisitions — not the other way around.

• Once one blue-chip institution locks a canon, others align.

This is how art history hardens.

Slowly. Then all at once.

Crypto art no longer needs validation.

But history needs anchors.

Punks and Squiggles are now institutional anchors — fixed points in the story of 21st-century digital culture.

Wen MoMA?

Now.

And the implications are just getting started.