>> Art is perfectly suited to it because it's digital, because it can be copied easily, and because you want to have something which lets everybody know, "I own this."

>> BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen.

Coming up on Open Studio, we download all you need to know about the NFTs taking hold of the art world.

Then an artist of Ukrainian descent addresses the war.

>> It was absolute immediate response.

I had to do something.

>> BOWEN: Plus, for better or for verse.

We celebrate National Poetry Month with poetry readings.

>> From Roxbury to the Seaport Harbor, Castle Island.

>> BOWEN: And pirate booty up and down the Massachusetts coast.

>> The Whydah is the only authentic pirate treasure in the world.

>> BOWEN: It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ Welcome.

April is National Poetry Month, so throughout the show we'll feature the work of three poets who have performed readings for us here on Open Studio, including Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy K. Smith and Boston poet laureate Porsha Olayiwola.

But our first poet is Amanda Gorman, who shared this work when she joined me in May 2020.

>> Today, we burst into a new world.

Around the globe, you might not be wearing your robe, but this is our moment, our ode, so let's own it, let's smile, because we didn't mount this milestone alone.

This took a village.

We are the impossible image only ever seen in our ancestors' wildest dreams.

This is a rite of passage, but more so, the passage of light to we, the bright torch that never stops burning, never quits learning.

This night, too, shall pass, and when it does, this 2020 class won't just navigate a new normal.

Together, we'll build a better one.

We come to this commencement to search no more.

We're the good news we've been looking for, demonstrating that every desk holds a dawn disguised within it.

Today, we don't burst into a new world.

We begin it.

>> BOWEN: Now, NFTs, non-fungible tokens.

From record $69 million sales to their own exhibitions, NFTs have moved up in the art world.

To find out how fungible the art world is when it comes to NFTs, we took a closer look.

And we started by asking artists and observers of the art world, what is an NFT?

>> NFTs are a new way to sell and buy and show that you own a piece of digital artwork.

>> It's a token or I think of it as like a certificate of authenticity that exists online.

>> Art is perfectly, you know, suited to it because it's digital, because it can be copied easily, and because you want to have something which lets everybody know, "I own this."

>> BOWEN: Joining us for NFT time is George Fifield, founding director of Boston Cyber Arts; Sebastian Smee, art critic for The Washington Post; and Brooklyn-based digital artist Ann Spalter.

What does this do for your place in the art world?

>> So one of the exciting things it's done is help validate and give credibility to these amazing artists who have been creating digital artwork for many years and sometimes facing enormous hostility for doing so.

>> BOWEN: Because historically, digital art hasn't been taken seriously.

But undaunted, Spalter continues to push forward using artificial intelligence to create some of her surrealist-inspired imagery.

Every sale of her NFT work is recorded on the blockchain, or a digital ledger.

That's key if the work sells again.

When a piece of work sells at auction, the artist generally doesn't get any of that revenue, especially if it sells for millions of dollars and they painted it earlier in their career.

How does this change it for you?

>> The NFT market changes that.

You often get ten percent royalties on the work, and that's a huge thing.

As an artist, if you wake up and your work has resold, the first time that happened to me, and I saw that I received ten percent on it, it was literally, like, an emotional thing.

I felt like crying, like, it was, it was huge.

>> BOWEN: $69 million is how much a work by the artist Beeple fetched at auction last year.

Before that, the relatively unknown artist's work sold for less than $100, and hardly anyone had heard of NFTs.

>> The work was bid up by people who are in this sphere, in the sphere of cryptocurrencies and so on, and they had a vested interest.

Clearly, they wanted to create a lot of hype.

So this worked out really well for Beeple.

I'm happy for him, he seems like a really nice guy, but it's an insane amount of money.

>> BOWEN: The part of it, to me, that feels like, am I just... is this all about marketing?

Is this all about advertising?

How do you define the legitimate line here?

>> I mean, I think to some extent it is.

I would say it's about creating a commodity.

We're entering this whole new world with the metaverse, with cryptocurrencies and so on, where people are going to be-- they already are-- buying and selling things that exist only digitally.

And, you know, I guess it's evolved out of, you know, in-game purchases in video games, or in-app purchases.

I think we're going to see a lot of the people who are very skeptical about it at first, including in some cases, myself, realizing that no, there is some amazing stuff being done here and we need to pay attention to it.

>> BOWEN: Like the work George Fifield has been presenting in Boston Cyber Arts for decades, including a recent show featuring NFT artists.

>> I like to say about Boston Cyber Arts the artists we show regard code as their creative medium.

And this is just... was another step in the logical progression of exploring how artists use technology to make art.

>> BOWEN: But what troubles Fifield is the business side of NFTs, which can be purchased via auctions, galleries, or directly through artists.

But people pay using cryptocurrency.

Is this a fad?

>> I think the more interesting question is, is it a bubble?

Because that's one of the things that truly scares me, is this idea that you're buying something which changes its value, art, in a currency that changes its value, currency, all the time.

>> BOWEN: So we've learned that NFTs are a boon for digital artists.

They're invigorating for curators always looking toward the horizon.

But what does it mean for the future of art?

Sebastian Smee says he's no Nostradamus, but... >> That is the bet that people like Mark Zuckerberg and many other companies are placing, that we will be more and more online.

We'll have avatars.

A whole bunch of possibilities will open up.

I think that there's still going to be a hunger for physical works of art, almost as an antidote to that.

I think it already exists.

People love to go to museums.

They're doing so in record numbers, partly because it's a way to get away from all things digital.

And I think that will continue to be the case and that urge will perhaps only get stronger.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Next, when she saw the Russian attack on Ukraine, artist Lesia Sochor went directly into her studio to create.

Her work is now on view at the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton.

The show, Pysanka: Symbol of Renewal, carries forward the egg painting traditions she learned from her Ukrainian mother.

Lesia Sochor, thank you so much for being with us today.

>> Delighted to be here.

>> BOWEN: I want to talk about your work right now on view at the Museum of Russian Icons.

Tell us what we found there.

>> The egg has taken on the role of talisman to ensure good health and good harvest, and prosperity and abundance.

And it's, it's a huge symbol of protection and fertility.

And since I am first and foremost a painter, I decided to take this image and give it a new interpretation into my paintings.

And so it gave me a whole new path of creative expression.

In and of itself, the egg and all it symbolizes is fascinating.

But for me, it was even more of a connection, of course, because of my ancestry and my roots.

>> BOWEN: I was really struck to, going back to the eggs, to learn just how deeply embedded the tradition is, and how it was, especially for you, learning it from your mother, who was a Ukrainian immigrant.

How does that come to the fore in your work?

>> It was a tradition that we did every spring because that is what the egg symbolizes.

I mean, it's a symbol of the rebirth of spring.

This inanimate object that is actually filled with, with a potential of new life, the source of all life, actually.

And so it was... every spring we got, my mother got out all of the beautiful tools and our dyes, and it was just something I grew up with.

We have continued making these eggs every single spring now for many, many, many, many years.

It's incredibly meaningful to we Ukrainians as a culture.

>> BOWEN: What does that mean to you now as this war continues with the Russian invasion in Ukraine?

>> You know, I condemn this war.

I condemn this man.

I mean, he's just, he's just a monster, which leads me into this legend that I will tell you about creating eggs.

There's a legend about a monster that's chained to a cliff.

And if people get a little bit lazy and don't make as many eggs, the chains loosen.

And if people stop making eggs all together, the chains will break and the monster gets loose and destroys the world.

So I feel like that's what's happening, I mean, not to make light of it, but you know, as a metaphor, I think people just need to, to make eggs, to create these beautiful, talismanic eggs that are revered and they have so much power.

And somehow, through the making of them and being empowered in the strength of a culture, perhaps they will destroy this horrible monster.

>> BOWEN: You made new work that we'll see at the Museum of Russian Icons.

How did what you saw unfold send you back into the studio and start creating again?

>> Well, there are three new pieces that I, that I just very recently completed.

These three pieces that I made, they are of babushkas, which are a representation of a culture.

They're paying homage to the icon itself, because they are done on wooden panels with acrylic paints, and I used gold leaf.

>> BOWEN: Well, I also want to ask about the resiliency.

We see what the Ukrainians are going through now, and the strength and the resolve, so much of that coming from the resolve in their president as well.

And I think of artists who, who can't necessarily work in times of conflict, who have to think about it, process it, go away for a while, and then come back.

But I'm struck by the fact that you just launched into it.

>> There was no way to stop that.

I mean, I had to do something.

Yes, immediately.

And I think that, that we are a passionate people and... there is a great deal of resiliency in us and through us.

My parents were very much that way.

They were both Ukrainian immigrants.

So yes, as an artist, that was just, my absolute immediate response.

I had to put something down as a reaction and as a protest.

>> BOWEN: Among the endless horrors that we're seeing in Ukraine, the destruction of museums and the loss of artwork, I mean, how does that hit you when you see that?

And it's obviously too early still to know the extent of damage, but we know that entire collections have been completely obliterated.

>> What can you possibly say?

It was completely heartbreaking.

There is a finite quality about it.

It's sort of this abysmal depth of despair, because you know that none of this will ever be retrieved again.

It's, to me... For... for another human being to feel that they have that kind of power and control, and aggression over not just civilians, but over, you know, precious artwork and collections is completely abominable.

That's all I can say about it.

>> BOWEN: Finally, as you think about your work sitting at the Museum of Russian Icons, which for people who are not familiar, they should know that this is a museum that was built by Gordon Langton, an American businessman who passionately collected icons and built this gorgeous museum in Clinton, Massachusetts.

So your work sits in the Museum of Russian Icons, which we wouldn't have thought about a couple of months ago.

And now you think about how they rest together.

Does that change forever, to think of Ukraine and Russia?

How do you, how do you look at that with your work in the collection right now?

>> Um, that's a really interesting question.

No, I don't see them as being interwoven at all.

I see they're, they're in the Museum of Russian Icons.

Yes, the word "Russian" is in there.

But as the director will tell you, it's, it's, it's far more than just a Russian museum.

It's really a museum devoted to Slavic cultures.

And for them to reinstall this exhibit is actually, I think, taking a very brave and courageous stance for the museum, to actually say that they understand that Ukraine is its own culture, has its own tradition, has its own language.

It's unfortunate that it has to happen at the expense of this, you know, horrific time, and at the expense of this invasion, and of what Ukraine is going through.

>> BOWEN: Well, again, thank you so much for being with us, we really appreciate it.

>> Thank you very much, Jared, it was a pleasure.

♪ ♪ >> "Boston Ode."

Can you name a love without rigor?

Without sweet ache and stretch and sunshine and sweat?

Boston, parent of our hallowed America, someone else's God before the land was conquered.

Not the city we are born of, but it is a charitable home.

The same way the city upon a hill gave birth to a country and we are all now inside a nation and unbelonging at once.

There is not a love I can fathom with neither push nor pull.

With neither grit nor sorrow, nor glory raining out the other end.

What is a home, then, if unhinged and locked?

Beloved city, gemmed with bodegas on its corners, each studded with a cat guarding the front stoop.

Gracious current, ringing the rush of the river, the calm of the pond, the guilt of the ocean, hushing secrets along Dorchester's shores.

Beantown, the best to keep the kept.

Slades on Tremont and Bintou's in Roslindale.

Home is the booth we plop into.

The cafés where the cashier craft meals that fill us.

Dear city, southwest corridor thumming from the subway racing against air.

Patron saint of travelers, plague of trolleys, hold us still at lights, unlearn us bustle and hand us patience.

Memorandum to slow.

Remind us who it is we are, and the blood love it took to raise us.

City of building blocks, place of clear water, of culture shaping, of planting and planning.

Tri-hilled city, tip the cup of tea and bring on the massacre.

City of building up, up, up, and people out, out, out.

City of ramming, city of running, of shifting, pacing, fast, gone-- champion of all.

Parade for everything.

Celebrate the house, the keeper of our bones.

Nest to our families.

Who will want if we won't?

And what is a heart if it does not pulse?

Doesn't pull itself toward itself, and extract itself away again?

What is a heart if it doesn't pause?

Then continue, as to remind the body it has chosen to keep going.

The gallant and the trodden, the gentrified and the migrant.

From Roxbury to the Seaport Harbor, Castle Island, cobblestoned tomb of chest, cobblestoned town, always shouting our melancholy big on your pavements, always chasing friends away and further into your arms, siren city.

Sunbathe, silly picnic, public garden concerts.

You beautiful summer.

You firework and worth it all.

You cold heat to my head, investor in wealth and health.

Eldest master, first future of our states, teacher of love long-standing, of might, fight, and force.

Politics and wind blow a barbed breeze, cutting kisses across the face.

O' city I love, city I know and walk the lawn of.

City I carry between my cheeks, around my neck.

City I found along my palms, under my nails.

City of song blaring, of loud leaping rhythm, familiar and inescapable, calling out to each of us by heart, singing out to all of us by name.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Tuesday, the Museum of Fine Arts rocks out.

Art rocks from the Wang Family Collection of Chinese painting explores the way rock aesthetics have long been an inspiration for Chinese art, design, architecture, and more.

Artist Wayne Strattman brings beauty to blown glass and rare gas in his plasma light show Pure Effects.

See it at the Sandwich Glass Museum this Wednesday.

Thursday, find a literary classic reimagined on stage.

Miss Holmes Returns offers Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's characters in a new light at the Greater Boston Stage Company.

A rare performance of Handel's opera Amadigi Di Gaula, comes to the stage with music and magic, courtesy of Boston Baroque.

Catch it in person or via livestream Friday.

Saturday, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder is a deliriously fun musical about the social climbing acrobatics of aristocracy.

See it at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston.

>> This is "Mothership."

You cannot see the mothership in space, it and she being made of the same thing.

All our mothers hover there in the ceaseless blue black, watching it ripple and dim to the prized, pale blue in which we spin-- we who are black, and you too.

Our mothers know each other there, fully and finally.

They see what some here see and call anomaly: the way the sight of me might set off a shiver in another mother's son, a deadly, silent digging in, a stolid refusal to budge; the viral urge to stake out what on solid ground is authority and sometimes also territory.

Our mothers, knowing better, call it folly.

>> BOWEN: Salem has some pirates to add to its cauldron of experiences.

That's where Real Pirates Salem opened last week.

It features an exhibition of pirate treasure recovered from The Whydah by adventurer Barry Clifford more than 30 years ago.

It's a sister museum to the Whydah Pirate Museum in West Yarmouth.

So batten down the hatches, we're going back to the Whydah Pirate Museum, which we first visited in 2016.

It was 1717 when a British slave ship named The Whydah, captained by pirate Black Sam Bellamy, ran headlong into a nor'easter off the coast of Cape Cod.

The Whydah hit land and keeled over.

All but two crew members drowned, and the sea submerged the vessel's gold and silver deep into the sand.

>> It was a story that every Cape Codder treasured, I believe, and I heard the story from my uncle Bill growing up as a kid, and mermaids and chests of treasure.

>> BOWEN: Ocean explorer Barry Clifford never forgot about The Whydah as he traveled the world searching sunken ships for treasure.

In 1982, just east of Wellfleet, he discovered what he believed was debris from The Whydah.

Even John F. Kennedy Jr. joined him on attempts to raise the ship, or at least parts of it.

>> Historically and archaeologically, it could be the only pirate ship that's ever been found.

>> BOWEN: Then in 1985, he and his diving crew struck gold, finding this bell inscribed with the words "The Whydah Galley, 1716."

>> You know, it was the front page of the New York Times, and hundreds of millions and all this worth of...

I had more friends than I knew what to do with all of a sudden.

>> BOWEN: The courts ruled the riches were legally his, and over the next 30 years, Clifford planned the Whydah Pirate Museum, now open in West Yarmouth, Massachusetts.

>> We really want to focus on kids and getting them to take a second look at history, to go in and look at things with your own... You come up with your own opinions and go exploring.

>> BOWEN: The museum shows what life was like on The Whydah: gaming tokens to pass the time, tools to keep the ship together, a toilet to find relief, and, yes, an overflowing treasure chest.

>> The Whydah is the only authentic pirate treasure in the world.

>> BOWEN: Getting the loot ready for display takes time.

Conservators like Chris McCourt first x-rays these concretions to find out what's inside.

Then, with a dental pick and toothbrush, he spends about a week extracting gold coins, silver buttons, and more.

>> This is like cement, so anything that's been trapped inside here that's been around that iron object is going to be protected and locked up in these, um, time capsules.

>> BOWEN: How do you know when it's concretion versus a rock or something underneath the surface?

>> A lot of times we work, there's zero visibility, or very little, so we'll feel this maybe before we see it, and it doesn't feel like a rock.

I have a rock...

This is a typical cobblestone that we have on the site.

There's probably a million tons of these down there, and this is a much different feel than this, and it looks very different.

>> BOWEN: What do we see in this concretion?

>> This is fantastic.

This was a bag of gun parts, and we can tell that it was a bag because the bottom is round and we also have the indent, the marks from the fibers of the bag.

And this is all filled with bits and pieces for the guns.

>> BOWEN: Guns like the Sun King pistol made of wood and brass.

Also encased were this leather shot pouch and a gunpowder box.

Among the some 150 armed men aboard when the ship wrecked was a child.

>> There was this very rebellious young boy named John King who threatened his mother and joined the pirates.

>> BOWEN: His short life was preserved through a size six shoe, silk stocking, and leg bone, a harsh piece of maritime history presented amid cases of African jewels and bags of booty.

>> We all know we did the right thing, you know, keeping this together, and especially where it means so much.

>> BOWEN: With thousands of concretions left to take apart and plans for an 18th century pirate village, the museum has only just set sail.

♪ ♪ And that is all for this edition of Open Studio.

Next week, the role of the camera in creating a prison nation.

Plus, when bloodlines cross the line in the Huntington Theatre Company comedy Our Daughters Like Pillars.

As always, you can visit us online at GBH.org/OpenStudio.

And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter @OpenStudioGBH.

I'm @TheJaredBowen.

We leave you now with the sights and sounds of the Great Animal Orchestra at the Peabody Essex Museum.

For this installation, musician Bernie Krause composed a symphony of the natural world.

It comes from 5,000 hours of recordings he's made of some 15,000 terrestrial and marine species worldwide.

I'm Jared Bowen, thanks for joining us.

(animal screeching) (birds chirping) (animals chittering)