California-born artist Matt Mullican has created 'THAT NOTHING SHOULD EXIST: 55 Years of Work', the largest exhibition of his career, which will inaugurate the Roarington Art Center—a virtual museum in the metaverse. The museum, designed by Italian architect Benedetto Camerana, is embedded in the City of Roarington, a digital dreamland launched by Liechtenstein-based entrepreneur Fritz Kaiser through his non-profit The Classic Car Trust (TCCT). The exhibition is scheduled to open to the public in February next year, with viewers navigating the space like an immersive three-dimensional video game.
This initiative matters because it represents one of the first fully realized contemporary art museums in the metaverse, a space where the art world has been slower to embrace virtual technologies compared to fashion, design, and architecture. The museum, led by Swiss publisher and collector Michael Ringier, aims to combine automotive and art cultures, offering global access to exhibitions without shipping costs or spatial constraints. Mullican, who began exploring metaverse-like concepts in the early 1970s, sees the project as a natural extension of his work on visual systems and perception, raising fundamental questions about where art exists and how it is experienced in the 21st century.