NFT trends to watch, Erin Dragotto Director of Museum of Art & Light

By Selva Ozelli Esq, CPA, Author of Sustainably Investing in Digital Assets Globally

The MOU issued by the SEC and CFTC during March significantly impacts the NFT collectible market by creating a “token taxonomy” that generally treats digital collectibles as non-securities. Digital collectibles that are fractionalized (providing fractional ownership in one asset) or structured with an expectation of profit from others’ managerial efforts may still be deemed securities.

The SEC’s 2026 interpretation clarifies that standard creator royalties do not, by themselves, transform a digital collectible into a security. However, if an NFT is marketed with promises of passive income or profits derived from the seller’s ongoing management, it could still be considered part of an investment contract (a security).

The era of speculative profile picture NFT hype has subsided with this guidance offering a path to a more stable NFT market for digital artists.   As part of her NFT series  exclusively for Irish Tech News, Selva Ozelli  asks Erin Dragotto Executive Director of The Museum of Art & Light about her journey to founding this innovative museum and how traditional, digital or AI artists can apply for exhibitions at MoA+L.

Erin Dragotto Director of Museum of Art & Light interviewed

Erin Dragotto is the Executive Director of the Museum of Art + Light (MoA+L) in Manhattan, Kansas. A native of Manhattan, she returned to her hometown to lead the development and operation of The Museum of Art & Light museum, which officially opened its doors on November 8, 2024.

The MoAL is a nonprofit contemporary art museum, dedicated to exploring the convergence of visual art, digital technology, and immersive experience. Through innovative exhibitions and interdisciplinary programming, the Museum expands how audiences engage with art in the 21st century, fostering curiosity, creativity, and meaningful connections across diverse communities.

As the Executive Director, Erin oversees fundraising, strategic growth, and the integration of immersive digital technology with traditional fine art.  She advocates for the role of arts and culture in economic development, emphasizing that while jobs bring people to a city, “arts and culture make them stay”.  She recently curated the exhibition Heritage & the Human Condition and spearheaded the U.S. debut of the immersive exhibition Picasso: Art in Motion.  For more information about the MoA+ L, upcoming exhibitions, and ticketing, visit artlightmuseum.org. Follow the Museum on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Interview with Erin Dragotto Executive Director of The Museum of Art & Light

Tell us your journey to becoming the executive director of the Museum of Art & Light.

My journey to becoming Executive Director of the Museum of Art + Light really began in Manhattan, Kansas, where I was born and raised. I left to attend Pepperdine University in Malibu, where I worked as a student at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum. Initially planning to become an elementary school art teacher, I graduated with a BA in liberal arts with a minor in art. After graduating, I found myself drawn to artistic storytelling in different ways—through public relations and book publishing, moving into agency work in Los Angeles and San Francisco promoting a wide range of products and brands, but always arts leaning.

While there, I felt a pull toward museums and arts education, where I shifted careers to work with a children’s museum in Sausalito. It was there that I realized I wanted to build a career that combined education, creativity, and public engagement.

I went on to earn a master’s degree in art education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which opened the door to my first major role in the museum field in education at the Adler Planetarium. Not long after, I was selected to lead the Chicago Council on Science & Technology, where I spent eight years growing the organization and deepening my experience in nonprofit leadership while partnering with major research institutions in and around the Chicagoland area.

In 2014, I returned more directly to the museum world as Director of Development for the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium, where I spent nearly eight years leading fundraising efforts, advancing major projects, and helping shape long-term institutional strategy.

Today, as Executive Director of the MoA + L, I have the opportunity to bring all of those experiences together—education, storytelling, science, art, and community-building—to help create a museum that reflects how people engage with art in a rapidly evolving, digital world.

What was your vision in leading and developing this  pioneering institution, which opened in November 2024, that merges fine art with digital, immersive technology featuring “The Mez,” a 21,500-sq-ft, 188-million-pixel projection space for immersive digital art, alongside curated gallery exhibitions and educational programming focusing on 21st-century art and technology?

The vision to pioneer a museum that opened with immersive, digital-and fine art-experiences from inception began with two fundamental goals: 1) to lead as an innovative contemporary art museum that fully embraces arts education and our mission to–bridge 21c technology with the visual and performing arts, with the visitor experience; and 2) understand the 21st century audience as technology native.

These two fundamental goals are what set us apart from any other museum as we considered them completely before opening our doors in November of 2024. It is these fundamental goals which continue to drive our ethos and allow us to be limitless in all facets of operations, exhibitions, partnerships and programming future forward.

Which other museums have you worked at before founding MoA+L and how did your over 20 years of work experience shape your vision for MoA+L?

Previously stated in the bio above, but access to the Art Institute of Chicago throughout my master’s degree, then career-focused work at the Adler Planetarium, Sausalito Children’s Museum, Frederick R. Weisman Museum, National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium, and limitless encounters with museums and arts and culture experiences in various towns and cities lived as well as global travel throughout my life.

Tell us about the exhibition Heritage & Human condition exhibition at MoA+L.

Heritage & the Human Condition exhibition which took place from August 20, 2025, through March 8, 2026 was near and dear to the museum and a perfect example of a collaboration that has extended beyond our walls. Dean Mitchell, a national recognized painter whose roots trace back to the Midwest, partnered with the MoA + L in a sweeping retrospective tracing the full arc of his 40-year career which takes on an emotional pursuit to capture time, humanity, and heritage. Through more than fifty works—this exhibition showcased a rich body of paintings, prints, and drawings of rural and urban environments, portraits and still lifes, portraying enduring values of roads traveled along with personal narratives steeped in memory, resilience, and cultural reflection.

Throughout our partnership Dean became a close personal friend which gave the work and its purpose in our institution personal meaning for me, him and our community.

Dean is an artist whose work speaks so honestly to the Black American experience as well as the American Midwest. The work discusses the frailty and the natural progression of aging and beauty, inviting viewers to sit with the work as if the subject matter were personal to them, but where the subject matter is placed in such a way to be closely observed. This ignited our community in ways we could never have imagined through new partnerships and programs.

We are hoping to travel to this exhibition in the future forward.

This year our country is celebrating its 250th anniversary with President Donald Trump at the start of this year, issuing an Executive Order Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence, which advances his America’s AI Action Plan.Do you have any exhibitions planned on the theme of AI, USA’s 250th anniversary and art?

To celebrate 250th anniversary of America we have planned the exhibition Generation-to-Generation: Conversing with Kindred Technologies by Nathaniel Stern and Sasha Stiles which is scheduled to be at the Museum of Art and Light (MoA+L) in Manhattan, Kansas, from September 2, 2026, to February 14, 2027. This groundbreaking, traveling exhibition illuminates the intertwined evolution of humanity and AI technology, inviting viewers to reconsider the relationship between humans and the tools they invent through an immersive fusion of sculptures, prints, electronics, music, movement, and poetry.

By blending Artificial Intelligence with more traditional artistic expression, Generation to Generation: Conversing with Kindred Technologies cultivates new pathways for imagination while nurturing the roots of our creative inheritance, and the always-evolving dialogue between art and innovation. In the gallery, viewers will find an immersive fusion of sculptures, prints, electronics, music, movement, and poetry, all born from creative collaboration with AI.

Sasha Stiles is an award-winning Kalmyk-American poet, artist, and researcher whose work explores what it means to be human in a more-than-human age. A leading voice in generative creativity, she bridges conceptual and computational art to reimagine poetry as a form of living intelligence, synthesizing text and technology, memory and imagination.  Her acclaimed “A Living Poem,” is part of the inaugural, ongoing exhibitions at the Museum of Art + Light (MoA+L) in Manhattan, Kansas. Her work is also on view at MoMA in New York through Spring 2026.

National Stern is an artist and writer, NEA, Fulbright and NSF grantee and professor, interventionist and public citizen. He has produced and collaborated on projects ranging from ecological, participatory, and online interventions, interactive, immersive, and mixed reality environments, to prints, sculptures, videos, performances, and hybrid forms.

Does MoA+L museum shop sell NFTs of exhibiting artists’ work?

No, we do not sell NFTs in our gift shop. We do partner on occasion with artists on minted drops.

Recently the SEC and CFTC came out with regulatory clarity concerning NFTs https://irishtechnews.ie/eight-years-in-the-making-eth-is-a-commodity/.  How will this impact the NFT and collectibles market and your museum?

We will always focus on the good of our non-profit mission and advancing the digital art community by putting the artistic process and output first, regardless of ETH’s current classification. We partner with artists on minted drops where appropriate; we don’t have a constant stream of ‘collectibles’; so not a major concern.

What is your message to digital or AI artists who might want to exhibit at your museum?

Please fill out the artists submission form here: https://artlightmuseum.org/artist-exhibition-submission/

Anything else you would like to add.

This summer the MoA+L will be hosting Picasso: Art in Motion, a groundbreaking immersive exhibition making its United States debut on May 2, 2026 through November 2, 2026.   Serving as the centerpiece of a museum-wide season, the exhibition anchors a dynamic group of presentations that together offer an expansive look at artistic innovation—past, present, and future. More here: https://artlightmuseum.org/upcoming-exhibitions/

How can people reach you and the curator at your museum?

Jori Cheville, Director of Curatorial Affairs can be reached at jcheville@artlightmuseum.org / Erin Dragotto, Executive Director can be reached at edragotto@artlightmuseum.org

Selva Ozelli Esq, CPA is an international digital asset legal  expert  and author of Sustainably Investing in Digital Assets Globally.  Her  writings are translated into 45 languages and republished in over 200 global publications.  She is recognized as an expert media/TV commentator on global  tax and technology matters.

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