The critics are unanimous: the British Museum’s new exhibition, The World of Stonehenge, is a triumph. As archaeologists, it’s great for us to see the present obtain such plaudits. However the truth that the exhibition is as soon as once more sponsored by the oil and fuel supermajor BP brings inevitable disquiet. Tons of of our colleagues in archaeology, museums and the heritage sector have just lately signed a letter asking the museum to finish its relationship with BP. The signatories embody senior curators and lecturers from throughout the UK and past. This can be a decisive second for the British Museum: its settlement with BP is due for renewal this 12 months and its future hangs within the stability.
BP has maintained a technique of sponsoring cultural establishments for many years, as a part of its heavy funding in public relations. It’s eager to persuade the general public – and our policymakers – that it may be trusted to handle the transition to internet zero itself. However BP’s programme for “internet zero by 2050” depends on large use of unproved carbon seize applied sciences and implausible offsetting. The corporate is constant to search for new sources of oil and fuel, which the Worldwide Vitality Company has mentioned can't be exploited if internet zero is to be achieved. BP’s plans additionally ignore its 20% stake within the Russian oil firm Rosneft, which is launching a $134bn mission to drill within the Arctic. BP’s actions jeopardise efforts to maintain international heating inside the 1.5C restrict of the Paris local weather settlement and keep away from but worse droughts, wildfires and sea degree rise.
We don’t know precisely how a lot cash BP offers to the British Museum, though it’s virtually actually lower than 1% of the museum’s revenue. With 2021 earnings of £9.5bn, that is small change for BP. However at a time of constant underinvestment by the federal government, it’s an quantity that issues to the British Museum.
By way of this relationship, BP associates its identify with values of civilisation, curatorial care and scientific information concerning the human previous and current, even because it embraces insurance policies and techniques that arguably battle with all these beliefs. However that is no relationship of equals. The British Museum has no energy to affect BP’s decision-making or converse out in opposition to it. Quite the opposite, on account of this association, its senior personnel are sometimes required to publicly defend BP’s observe document.
We’ve been right here earlier than, with debates through the Eighties and Nineties round tobacco and arms firm sponsorship. Different potential sponsors exist. And we shouldn’t overlook that BP advantages from UK tax breaks value billions of kilos and has not paid company tax on its actions within the North Sea for the previous three years, whereas receiving tax reduction of virtually £400m, cash that would have been spent on supporting renewables or, for that matter, on museums and tradition.
Final 12 months, with George Osborne’s appointment because the museum’s chair of trustees, these points took a worrying new flip. Along with his position as chair, Osborne is a associate on the boutique advisory agency Robey Warshaw, which counts BP amongst its main purchasers. If he doesn't clearly recuse himself from any future selections on the connection with BP, it's laborious to see how a possible battle of curiosity may be averted.
Current investigations into decision-making processes on the British Museum by the marketing campaign group Tradition Unstained are worrying for all of us who care concerning the museum. They discover that the chairman’s advisory group exists outdoors the common governance buildings of the museum, but has high-level affect. We don’t know who its members are and its conferences should not minuted, however we do know that it permits ongoing contact between very senior company representatives, the chair and the director of the museum, Hartwig Fischer.
The British Museum is embarking on an formidable and really costly renovation plan. There's a lot at stake right here. Any additional take care of BP dangers undermining the museum’s popularity for years to return. The era now in its youth takes a dim view of the fossil gasoline trade and those that allow it. BP undoubtedly has money to spare – however it comes with a worth.
The museum’s trustees have a authorized responsibility to guard its popularity. We consider this features a responsibility to make sure that any resolution on sponsorship renewal is topic to oversight and due diligence, together with an impartial assessment of BP’s enterprise practices and suitability as a patron. In keeping with investigations by the group Artwork Not Oil, when the BP deal was renewed in 2016, it was the director of the museum who made the choice. It now appears crucial for the trustees to take a extra lively position. They'll little question be contemplating why it's that almost all different main cultural establishments within the UK, together with the RSC, Tate and the Nationwide Theatre, have renounced fossil gasoline sponsorship. They may even remember that this concern will not be going away. Quite the opposite, extremely artistic protests in opposition to BP’s presence within the museum will proceed and public opinion is more and more in favour of taking sturdy motion on local weather change. The open letter signed by our colleagues means that skilled opinion within the heritage sector has moved firmly in the identical route.
Our understanding of humanity’s previous issues for our future. The stays of our shared previous, and the way they're used, matter deeply for that future too. By persevering with to just accept fossil gasoline sponsorship, the British Museum has turn into an outlier when it needs to be a frontrunner inside its sector. Its trustees now have a significant window of alternative wherein to defend the museum’s future and its popularity.
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