The British Museum
Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in. As if the British Museum’s reputation couldn’t get any worse, its leadership made an incredibly controversial decision that led to at least one of its trustees resigning. Earlier in the year, people everywhere, and climate activists in particular, celebrated the news that it seemed like the partnership between the British Museum and the oil and gas giant British Petroleum would be ending. The museum was one of the few remaining British cultural institutions to maintain ties with BP, with nearly every other major museum and theater announcing that it would no longer accept their money or sponsorships. However, the British museum administration seems hell-bent on remaining the cartoon villains of the museum world by announcing that BP would provide £50 million towards some much-needed refurbishments.
In what the museum calls a “masterplan”, the new refurbishment will cost nearly £1 billion and take almost a decade to complete. It will include renovating the older parts of the museum and helping with a nearly complete redisplay of its collections. BP’s donation will specifically go towards renovating the galleries on the museum’s west side, which contain the Greco-Roman and Egyptian collections. These galleries contain the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon Marbles.
It’s safe to say that many people, climate activists in particular, are completely outraged. Chris Garrard, the co-director of the non-profit organization Culture Unstained, referred to this new arrangement as “astonishingly out of touch” and “completely indefensible”. To their credit, activists make rather good arguments when noting how major museums like the British Museum claim they are trying to become more sustainable, yet are doing so by accepting money and sponsorships from the corporations responsible for the climate crisis. I suppose getting a petroleum company to help pay for your efforts to wean yourself off of fossil fuels is a little ironic, and if that’s something that BP wants to spend its money on, then I say go for it. However, knowing that one of the world’s largest, most prestigious museums is only open thanks to the contributions of one of the planet’s biggest polluters will definitely weigh on people before they decide to visit.
Doug Parr, policy director for Greenpeace UK, called the deal “one of the biggest, most brazen greenwashing sponsorship deals the sector has ever seen. No cultural establishment that has a responsibility to educate and inform should be allowing fossil fuel companies to pay them to clean their image, not least the British Museum who have been here before. Did they learn nothing?” Of course, BP has allies in its efforts to clean up its image. Ed Vaizey, Britain’s cultural minister during David Cameron’s premiership and now a member of the House of Lords, has served as a BP apologist, stating in a recent interview, “We tend to treat BP as a pariah – BP has put a huge amount into the arts and has been treated very badly by some of the beneficiaries of that funding.” The decision to accept the donation from BP prompted one of the museum trustees, Muriel Gray, to resign in late November. In the minutes published from a meeting of the trustees, they recognized Gray’s departure and discussed increased security risks due to likely protests staged at the museum. So it’s not like the trustees and the rest of the museum leadership are completely oblivious to the backlash; it’s just that they think the damage to the museum’s reputation will be worth the £50 million donation.
The British Museum’s reputation is already completely trashed for several reasons. One is because of their across-the-board denial to heed calls for the return of cultural artifacts to their countries of origin. But there are also the leadership’s failures that came to light with the Higgs theft scandal that broke in August. Many commentators and analysts have pointed out that the Higgs theft was only made possible because of a toxic, secretive institutional culture the British Museum has developed to better defend itself from restitution claims. This culture is rearing its head once again. The news that the museum had no plans to extend its partnership with BP came in early June. However, these refurbishment plans have been in the works for years. Furthermore, it’s said that the museum chairman, George Osborne, signed off on BP‘s donation not even three weeks after this news story started circulating. So again, lack of transparency has led to a greater decrease in trust and further diminishment of its reputation. They got everyone’s hopes up yet were fully aware that they would dash them against the rocks sooner rather than later. Protests and demonstrations have disrupted museum operations over the British Museum’s ties to BP for years. Furthermore, last year, hundreds of employees across Britain’s museums signed a letter calling for the museum to cut off BP as a sponsor. But it seems the trustees have chosen to disregard all of this.
In the spring of 2024, the museum will sponsor an architectural competition to choose designs for the new galleries.