Just as cultural institutions around the world have removed the Sackler Family name as evidence of the harmful ways their money was made came to light, the damning evidence on BP’s past – and present – can no longer be ignored
Read the full letter
Following BP’s announcement of more than £2 billion profits in Q2 of 2023, more than 80 artists, museum directors, writers and researchers, as well as climate groups, have written to the outgoing British Museum Director Hartwig Fischer, urging him to re-name the Museum’s BP Lecture Theatre as a final act before leaving his role next year.
Despite the end of the museum’s 27 year sponsorship deal with the oil giant earlier this year, BP’s name still adorns the prestigious venue at the museum. While this remains the case, the signatories to the letter argue, “partnering with such companies lends them an undeserved and dangerous social legitimacy and influence.”
“Just as cultural institutions around the world have removed the Sackler Family name as evidence of the harmful ways their money was made came to light, the damning evidence on BP’s past – and present – can no longer be ignored”, the letter reads, referring to the campaign spearheaded by artist Nan Goldin, a lead signatory to the letter. The Sackler PAIN group founded by Goldin succeeded in removing the Sackler family name from multiple cultural institutions, including the British Museum, due to the family’s profits arising from the ownership of Purdue Pharma, a company that fuelled the opioid crisis in the US, in part, through downplaying the addictiveness of the Oxycontin drug which it manufactured.
Dr Juliette Brown, a Consultant Psychiatrist and member of Medact, said:
“The British Museum is one of a very few significant institutions still giving social licence to the fossil fuel industry which has repeatedly shown its disregard for human life and important ecosystems, particularly in the Global South. The impact of its actions is loss of life and poor health both globally and locally, with 61,000 excess deaths from heat exhaustion reported in last summer’s heatwave. As a health worker, I would urge the museum to consider the wide ranging negative effects of publicly endorsing such a harmful company and to finally sever its remaining ties with BP.”
The letter comes after over a week of wildfires raged through nine countries across southern Europe, as the continent experienced its hottest July on record, which scientists have attributed to human-made global heating resulting largely from the combustion of fossil fuels including oil and gas. BP has admitted that its total carbon emissions are set to increase until at least 2030, with plans for more deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. As Prime Minister Rishi Sunak re-affirmed the government’s commitment to ‘maxing out’ the UK’s north sea oil and gas reserves this week, BP CEO Bernard Looney added that he expected North Sea oil to be a “great part of our company for many decades to come,”.
The letter references the Museum’s stated goal to become a “a net zero carbon museum – no longer a destination for climate protest but instead an example of climate solution”, and suggests that this goal will be hollow while BP’s name is still on the wall, and while future sponsorship from fossil fuel companies is not ruled out.
Alongside the impacts of climate breakdown, campaigners have repeatedly drawn attention to the impacts on human rights and democracy of BP’s operations. The letter reads:
“Over the 27 years that BP was a sponsor of the British Museum, it lobbied against crucial climate legislation, funded industry groups that spread disinformation, and profited from close ties to repressive rulers in countries such as Russia and Egypt. The British Museum continued to partner with BP even as its oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, while its gas flaring caused toxic pollution for communities in Iraq.”
Tori Tsui, climate justice activist and writer, said:
“BP is symbolic of the ongoing neocolonial atrocities that permeate the fossil fuel industry. For the British Museum to align with BP, even symbolically, is to perpetuate and normalise the harm that has been caused. It is imperative that the British Museum stands on the right side of history in the fight for climate justice by removing BP’s logo from its venue.”
Dr Mirjam Brusius, Research Fellow in Colonial and Global History, London; Project Facilitator, 100 Histories of 100 Worlds in 1 Object, said:
“In the nineteenth century, archaeology, imperial expansion, and economic extraction of resources in (today’s) Middle East went hand in hand. Many of the British Museum’s antiquity collections derive from this context. The extraction of oil and the collection of artefacts, in other words, were always inextricably linked to one another. BP’s extractivist mode of operating in countries such as Iraq and Egypt, where many of the British Museum’s famous artefacts (such as the Assyrian winged lions or the Rosetta Stone) were removed, and its ongoing links to the label ‘BP’ are thus a continuation of the colonial legacies of the British Empire. By removing BP’s name from the Museum’s lecture theatre, the British Museum now has the chance to send a clear sign and take one meaningful step toward the institution’s reckoning with its own colonial legacy.”
On 28th July 2023 The British Museum announced that Dr. Hartwig Fischer, who has directed the Museum since 2016, will step down next year. A replacement will be sought from the Autumn. Fischer said: “I am excited about the next phase of my career, moving beyond the institutional framework of a single museum to engage in the rescue and preservation of cultural heritage in times of climate crisis, conflict, war, and violence.”
Dr Chris Garrard, Co-Director of Culture Unstained which co-ordinated the letter, added:
“These could be legacy-defining final acts by Director Hartwig Fischer, who signalled that his intention after his tenure at the British Museum would be to preserve heritage from the impacts of the climate crisis. First, he must make sure he leaves behind him a Museum that refuses to perpetuate the climate crisis, by drawing a line under its support for fossil fuel companies once and for all.”
The end of the British Museum’s 27-year sponsorship relationship with BP was confirmed in June, in documents accessed through Freedom of Information Request and published by the Guardian. The museum has still not ruled out taking sponsorship money from BP or other fossil fuel producers in the future.
Meanwhile, pressure mounts on the Science Museum to cut ties to fossil fuel sponsorship (BP, Shell, Adani and Equinor), and the spotlight is intensifying on sports teams involved in high carbon partnerships.
Culture Unstained 