.ART – the new digital dress code for the art world.

Publisher’s note: The company operating the .Art domain name registry made a very generous contribution to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as a part of my 2017 Pan-Mass Challenge fundraising campaign in exchange for the publication of this article.

One of the most contested and highly anticipated TLDs is entering General Availability on May 10th  at 14:00 UTC. The retail base price of a .ART domain name will be approximately $15.

.ART started off last year with a highly successful Early Adopters Program, remarkable for its extent and quality, with over 50 notable museums, galleries and artists acquiring .ART domains for future use. .ART has been adopted by The Cartier Foundation and Centre Pompidou (France), Guggenheim Museum (US), Tate, Serpentine Gallery and ICA (UK), MAMM and Bolshoi Theatre (Russia), artists like Banksy, Marina Abramovic, Love Watts and Shen Wei, as well as many other prominent members of the art community. Early registration covered forty countries on five continents.

Over 300 .ART websites are already live, some of them being used in a highly creative manner, representative of .ART’s ambition to become the online platform for the art world. Check out the Marina Abramovic Institute at www.mai.art and Jordan ‘Watts’ Watson, a prominent and controversial urban art authority with over 1,3 million followers. Watson, never having previously owned a website, chose www.lovewatts.art as his official web address. The leading global strategy firm for the art world  FITZ & CO has fully transferred to www.fitzandco.art to represent its target audience in a more direct and creative way.

Given the Watts’ example above, we think the introduction of .ART will drive a new set of customers toward the registration and uptake of domain names. The art community, which has traditionally been highly reliant on social media, will find that domains are a better way to collaborate and display their work and products. In addition, .ART’s significant investment in marketing, PR and art event participation in Europe, the Americas and Asia, is designed to compliment and enhance registrars marketing efforts. Museums, artists, art-service providers and attendees of art-related events are being educated that having a digital strategy and a unique memorable domain name address is a crucial part of their online presence.