On World Water Day, a museum unveils the Dead Sea NFT photo collection 

The Dead Sea Museum, a physical art museum planned for Arad, has debuted its inaugural NFT collection of Dead Sea images by environmental – art campaigner and Dead Sea Revival Project founder Noam Bedein.

According to a statement from the museum, the collection of 100 photos, dubbed Genesis NFT, shows the Dead Sea’s vanishing beauty in order to raise environmental awareness for the world wonder.

Bedein is the first person to photograph the Dead Sea World Heritage Site solely by boat, and he has a database of over 25,000 photos from the past six years, revealing fascinating hidden layers exposed at the lowest point on Earth, and revealed due to the drop in sea level, which is currently at its lowest point in recorded history.

The auction will begin on March 22nd, World Water Day, a United Nations-sponsored annual event that emphasises the importance of freshwater and advocates for its sustainable management. It will come to an end on April 22nd, Earth Day. The entire auction proceeds will go toward museum design as well as legal and legislative attempts to restore water to the Dead Sea.

“We need to come up with new and innovative ways to have an environmental impact on the Dead Sea, especially for World Water Day, by utilising all that is new and advanced in the world, such as the popularity of engaging NFTs and the Metaverse.” I intend to harness the responsibility of people to share and contribute to a practical beneficial environmental impact by granting ownership of a vanishing Dead Sea time capsule. “With the support of the NFT, the Dead Sea’s digital art asset will directly contribute to the Dead Sea’s cultural preservation for future generations and participate in the establishment of the Dead Sea Museum of Art,” Bedein told NoCamels.

The Dead Sea Revival Project (DRSP), founded by Bedein, is the only non-profit organisation dedicated completely to the promotion of the Dead Sea cause. Its instructional and advocacy work has been recognised by NASA and academic science and technology institutes in Israel and the United States. The DSRP has been featured in magazines such as National Geographic and on international news shows.

Ari Leon Fruchter, a social entrepreneur from the United States who brought renowned US photographer Spencer Tunick to Israel for the first time, set out to build a Dead Sea Museum in Arad in 2019 as part of a quest to both preserve the area and give back to a city that had impacted his life since he lived there in a World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) programme in 1997.

Fruchter wanted to make Arad, which is only 16 miles from the Dead Sea, a stopover for visitors on their way to the natural wonder. He also wants to raise awareness about the growing number of sinkholes in the Dead Sea. As freshwater dissolves subsurface layers of salt deposits, forcing the ground above it to collapse, the area has continued to suffer.

The Dea Sea must be preserved because “it has a richness of resources that benefit people and the world, and it is firmly anchored in the long history of this region and the people of Israel,” according to Fruchter.