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HEK Basel and the Tezos Foundation launched 404_LAND this month — the first virtual exhibition in their 2026 partnership, running through August 9 on virtual.hek.ch. An in-person component opens July 15 at the museum. The exhibition explores AI-generated creatures, glitch aesthetics, and digital identity through works that live natively on the web rather than being translated from gallery walls. HEK commissioned three independent curators for the virtual space, and the physical installation adds a companion program of talks and workshops. What makes this different from the institutional digital art shows opening in Hamburg, Kansas, and LA this year is the medium itself. 404_LAND is not putting screens inside a building and calling it digital art. It is building the exhibition space on the web — the same surface where the art was made — and treating the browser as gallery architecture. The Tezos Foundation role is preservation infrastructure: ensuring these works stay accessible and verifiable long after the exhibition closes. HEK has been collecting blockchain-based art since 2022. The 404_LAND partnership suggests they have moved past asking whether on-chain art belongs in institutions and started asking how institutions need to change to hold it.

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