LONDON – Since 1996, the oil conglomerate BP has been a major funder of the British Museum, the national museum of the United Kingdom. But documents obtained through freedom of information requests show that the museum has quietly ended that relationship, a development that climate activists are describing as a “massive victory.”
As reported in the Guardian, the British Museum and BP have not ended their relationship officially. While BP’s most recent sponsorship of an exhibit at the museum ended in February, the museum publicly continues to refer to BP as a sponsor. “BP is a valued long term supporter of the museum,” the museum said in a statement, “and our current partnership runs until this year.”
British Museum Grand Court [Diliff, Wikimedia Commons, CC 3.0]
The documents, obtained by the activist organization Culture Unstained, tell a different story. The documents indicate that no further exhibits are planned to be sponsored by BP and that the “current partnership” between BP and the museum only allows the corporation to exercise certain “supporter benefits” until the end of the year. Those benefits would include, for example, being able to hold corporate events at the museum. According to the documents, BP is providing no further funding to the British Museum.
As Artnet News notes, for decades BP was a major donor to the UK Arts world. The company had been a long-term donor not just to the British Museum, but to the Tate Modern, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Scottish Ballet, and the Royal Opera House. This practice, sometimes called “reputation laundering,” is a means for a company with an otherwise bad reputation, such as BP – who recently dialed back their commitment to reduced emissions in the face of record oil profits – to repair their image through highly conspicuous acts of philanthropy.
All of the above organizations had already dissolved their relationship with BP except for the British Museum. The museum’s intransigence led some activists to worry that BP would be a sponsor of the museum’s upcoming billion-pound renovation, the “Rosetta Project.” However, the documents indicate this will not be the case.
“If it is serious about responding to the climate crisis,” Chris Gerrard, co-director of Culture Unstained, told the Guardian, “the museum must now confirm that there will be no future relationships with fossil fuel producers, take down BP’s name from its lecture theatre and roundly reject the climate-wrecking business it represents.”
Many BP-sponsored exhibitions involved the ancient world, one of the British Museum’s specialties. The exhibit that closed in February, “Hieroglyphs: Unlocking Ancient Egypt,” was one such example. In 2016, another BP-sponsored Egyptian exhibit drew fierce criticism from activists, who installed a piece of protest art in the museum’s foyer. That protest occurred under similar circumstances to today, as the British Museum decided whether to renew its five-year agreement with BP. At that time, the Museum opted to continue the relationship.
BP’s sponsorship of exhibitions on the ancient world has led to many inventive protests involving pagan themes. In 2019, the activist group BP or Not BP? crashed the VIP preview of the exhibit “Troy: Myth and Reality” dressed as oil-stained Greek gods. This VIP preview is an example of one of the “supporter benefits” that BP will continue to enjoy for the rest of the year.
One of the 2019 protestors identified these events as one of the key benefits for corporations to engage in conspicuous arts donations. “The oil company gets to throw a party in the British Museum, giving it exclusive access to cultural and political elites—and helping it to strike new oil deals,” said BP or Not BP? activist Danny Chivers. “Why is a publicly-funded museum helping a fossil fuel giant to cosy up to repressive governments, and gain access to new oil and gas in the middle of a climate crisis?”
In February 2020, BP or Not BP? protestors managed to bring a literal 13-foot-tall Trojan Horse into the museum courtyard. About 60 protestors participated in an overnight occupation to guard the horse, and 1500 demonstrated in the museum the following day, chanting “BP must fall!”
“Like the legendary Trojan Horse, BP’s sponsorship is not a gift but a cynical way to hide something far more sinister and destructive,” said activist Sarah Horne at the time.
Protestor dressed in ancient Greek garb to protest BP at the British Museum in 2020 [Steve Eason, Flickr, CC 2.0]
The British Museum has previously defended its sponsorship by BP as necessary on financial grounds without openly defending fossil fuel extraction. “Temporary exhibitions are expensive to plan and stage,” a museum spokeswoman told Artnet News in 2019. “The money we receive from BP and other supporters allows us to successfully plan exhibitions long-term and deliver public benefit.” The spokeswoman mentioned that this funding allows for exhibits on “less well known cultures,” naming the Scythians and Assyrians as examples, and indicated such exhibits would not be possible without corporate support.
While the British Museum and other publicly funded arts institutions have had their funding from the government slashed in recent years, BP or Not BP? estimated that BP’s funding would only have amounted to 0.3% of the British Museum’s annual income as of 2019.
George Osbourne, the president of the British Museum, announced at a trustees’ dinner last year his plans for the Museum to change its own image in regard to climate change issues. “Our goal is to be a net zero carbon museum,” he said, “no longer a destination for climate protest but instead an example of climate solution.”
“It is important that institutions like the British Museum do not give Big Oil the opportunity to look like a force for good in society; denying them this platform is important,” said Ahdaf Soueif, who resigned as a trustee from the museum in 2019 in part over protest at the museum’s relationship with BP. “At this time of global crisis, which particularly impacts the young, the museum should be directing its weight, its creativity and its resources to helping to create the world the coming generations need to live in.”
The Wild Hunt is not responsible for links to external content.
To join a conversation on this post:
Visit our The Wild Hunt subreddit! Point your favorite browser to https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Wild_Hunt_News/, then click “JOIN”. Make sure to click the bell, too, to be notified of new articles posted to our subreddit.