The British Museum’s ‘BP Exhibitions’

Our campaign so far

 

DianaMore-2574In August 2023, more than 80 artists, museum directors, writers and researchers, as well as climate group, wrote to the outgoing British Museum Director Hartwig Fischer, urging him to re-name the Museum’s BP Lecture Theatre.

april-2022.-photo-by-kristian-buus

 

In June 2023 we confirmed that BP’s sponsorship of the British Museum’s major exhibitions had finally ended after 27 years – a seismic shift representing a near total retreat of fossil fuel sponsorship from the UK cultural sector!

a-deathly-bp-exec-attends-the-british-museums-bp-sponsored-days-of-the-dead-festival.-photo-by-diana-more.-october-2016In March 2023 we increased the pressure on the Museum to confirm the status of its BP partnership ahead of a meeting of its Board of Trustees with a satirical film highlighting how BP has used its decades-long relationship with the Museum to shore up relationships with repressive regimes in Russia, Mexico and Egypt in order to further its fossil fuel extraction.

Drop BP protest - British Museum, London, UK. 11 December, 2022 | Ron Fassbender photography

In December 2022 we published new evidence about the status of the British Museum’s relationship with BP, covered by the Guardian, which asked: ‘Is the writing on the wall for the British Museum’s BP deal?’

 

Free Alaa El-Fattah - British Museum, London, UK. 11 October, 2022

In October 2022, as the Museum opened a new BP-sponsored exhibition on Ancient Egypt, we called on it to speak out on human rights in Egypt today. A letter signed by more than 80 cultural figures and climate organisations urged the Museum to support the call for the release of British-Egyptian writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah and all political prisoners in Egypt ahead of COP27. Activists staged a read-in of Alaa’s work as the exhibition opened and projected Free Alaa messages onto the Museum’s facade.

 

Screenshot 2022-04-26 16.06.44In April 2022 we sent a formal submission to British Museum trustees setting out how renewing the partnership with BP could breach the Museum’s own policies and conflict with standards governing the culture sector. The submission was backed by figures from the fields of climate science, archaeology, culture sector workers and the youth climate strike movement, and sets out ‘how the potential harm of signing a new sponsorship agreement with BP demonstrably outweighs the benefits and would be inconsistent with the museum’s commitments on sustainability’. 

Screenshot 2022-02-19 10.08.21In February 2022 we revealed on Channel 4 News that the British Museum has a secretive ‘Chairman’s Advisory Group’ made up of representatives of corporations, including BP, that are given a direct line to the museum’s leaders behind closed doors. We also revealed that the museum’s director is actively pursuing renewal of the sponsorship deal with BP. At the same time, over 300 archaeologists wrote to the museum calling on it to drop BP.

George-Osborne-e1624530328652In June 2021 we responded to the news that former Chancellor George Osborne would be the new chair of the British Museum by arguing that he is a completely unsuitable choice with clear conflicts of interest that mean he should have no say in deciding the future of the museum’s BP sponsorship deal.

 

In July 2019, Egyptian author and British Museum trustee Ahdaf Soueif resigned citing the museum’s intransigence on BP sponsorship, workers’ rights and the repatriation of artefacts taken in colonial times. Staff from the museum’s PCS union branch issued a statement in solidarity with her. The British Museum’s chairman took to national media to defend BP, and we debunked the misinformation he was spreading.

 

To coincide with the British Museum’s 2018 BP-sponsored exhibition I am Ashurbanipal: King of Assyria, King of the World, we worked in partnership with Platform and Campaign Against Arms Trade to publish a new briefing: ‘From War to Warming: the shameful story of BP in Iraq’.

 

BM Scythians image

At the start of 2018, we launched a new web resource – Crude Connections – to coincide with the British Museum’s BP exhibition Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia. It revealed how BP uses sponsorship and lobbying to boost its business in Russia.

 

In 2016, we published a report highlighting how the British Museum had broken its own ethics rules in renewing its partnership with BP. You can read it here.

 

 

Quick Facts

BP Sponsorship of the British Museum

BP has been a sponsor of the British Museum since 1996 and until 2023 was the title sponsor of the museum’s major exhibitions.

  • The ‘BP Exhibitions’ allowed the company to boost its brand by associating itself with the UK’s most visited cultural institution.
  • As part of the redevelopment of the museum’s Great Court in 2000, BP gave money to create the ‘BP Lecture Theatre’ where the museum’s major events are hosted.
  • BP used the museum as the setting for its annual business reception, as well as many other private events where it entertains strategically important policy-makers.