BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Virtual Real.
Sec. Virtual Reality and Human Behaviour
This article is part of the Research TopicAI-Driven XR Applications in Cultural Heritage: A New Era of Interactive MuseumsView all articles
From Cryptoart to the Metaverse: Interactive Museum Ecosystems and the Case of Museu XYZ
Provisionally accepted
- Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro PEP/COPPE/UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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This paper presents an investigation into the emergence and consolidation of museum ecosystems in the metaverse, focusing on a case study at Museu XYZ, a Brazilian native digital institution. Using the research-creation methodological approach, this study examines how an artist's community embraced Blockchain, Extended Reality (XR), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to redefine its practices of curatorship, cultural mediation, and the preservation of digital artistic heritage. Instead of a traditional, centralized curatorship, the results detail the implementation of a decentralized curatorial model through the engagement of artists and collectives. This paper concludes that Museu XYZ operates as an apparatus of militant mediation, transcending the exhibition function to act as a laboratory of possible futures, in which technology serves experimentation, social inclusion, and the expansion of digital arts visibility.
Keywords: Advanced technologies, ArtificialIntelligence (AI), Creative media, Cultural heritage, EXtended reality (XR), Metaverse, virtual reality
Received: 27 Dec 2025; Accepted: 06 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Cunha, Lira, Bartholo and Caulliraux. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ana Claudia Cunha
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