Art Basel Miami Beach 2024, December 7
In partnership with Microsoft

How are AI and cloud technologies transforming art collecting?

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Steve Clayton, Vice President of Communications Strategy at Microsoft, Seattle Pablo Rodríguez-Fraile, Investor and Philanthropist, Miami Moderator: Laurie Rojas, Writer, cultural strategist and consultant, Miami
How is technology transforming the way we discover, experience, and collect art? From AI-enhanced fair visits to blockchain-authenticated digital works, new tools are reshaping how collectors engage with art in all its forms. Steve Clayton, an art collector and Microsoft’s vice president of communications strategy, will be joined by Pablo Rodríguez-Fraile, an investor and philanthropist whose pioneering vision spans both traditional and digital collecting. Together, they will explore how digital technologies are revolutionizing art appreciation and collection. What tools are now available to enhance our experience of both physical and digital works, and to discover tomorrow’s leading artists? What role do NFTs and blockchain play in the future of collecting? Moderated by Laurie Rojas, this panel will examine how collectors can leverage technology to build meaningful art collections across mediums. 
The Art Basel Miami Beach 2024 Conversations program is curated by Kimberly Bradley.
Steve Clayton is Vice President of Communications Strategy at Microsoft. With over 25 years of experience at Microsoft, Clayton leads the Microsoft Communications Strategy Team, working closely with the CEO, and focusing on reinventing how Microsoft operates its communications business using AI. Prior to this role, Clayton led global public affairs for Microsoft and was the company’s Chief Storyteller. He is also an art collector with a bias toward British street and contemporary works. 
Pablo Rodríguez-Fraile, a leading patron of the arts, mathematician, economist, and investor, is celebrated for his transformative contributions to the digital art landscape. The core of his artistic endeavors is the RFC Art Collection, recognized globally as a premier collection of tokenized digital art. The collection encompasses iconic pieces by digitally native artists such as Refik Anadol, Andrés Reisinger, Pak, Quayola, Beeple, Sofia Crespo, and many others. Rodríguez-Fraile’s unconventional patronage activities include the commissioning of Refik Anadol’s large-scale digital work Machine Hallucinations: Coral for Miami Art Week in 2021. More recently, he led the co-donation of Refik Anadol’s Unsupervised - Machine Hallucinations to the Museum of Modern Art, New York. This gift marked a historic moment in digital art with Unsupervised becoming the first tokenized digital artwork to enter the museum’s permanent collection.

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