ENDING THE ARTWASH

31 August 2023
Culture
Britain


A decade-long movement has largely dismantled fossil fuel sponsorships in the culture sector. Danny Chivers reports about how activism and international solidarity reshaped industry dynamics – and public sentiment.

Standing firm against BP sponsorship of British Museum’s ‘Troy’ exhibition on 8 February 2020. Hundreds of activists trying to end the artwash were also joined by a giant Trojan horse.

 IMAGEPLOTTER/ALAMY

Ten years ago, the UK arts and culture scene was awash with oil company logos. From the BP Portrait Award to the Shell-sponsored Southbank Centre in London, the industry was deeply embedded in the most high-profile arts institutions.

Today, things look very different. Earlier this year, it was confirmed that BP’s deals with the Royal Opera House and British Museum have ended, meaning the oil industry has now been almost entirely swept away from the UK culture sector. At least 15 cultural institutions have shuttered their oil partnerships in the last 10 years.

GREENWASH

By sponsoring theatres, museums and concert halls, the fossil fuel industry had been able to hide its destructive activities behind a friendly façade of arts and education. High-profile arts partnerships also ensured access to elites and decision-makers.

At the British Museum, for example, BP frequently sponsored exhibitions linked to countries where it operates. This allowed company executives to schmooze government officials from Mexico, Egypt, Russia or Iraq at exclusive exhibition launch parties, turning the (publicly-funded) British Museum into a space for BP to lobby for more drilling opportunities. In return, BP made sponsorship payments worth less than 0.5 per cent of the museum’s annual budget.

Many of the communities on the frontlines of oil extraction and climate change are the very same communities with colonially-looted artefacts in its vaults.

Resistance to these deals stretches back to 2004, when the campaign group London Rising Tide began targeting the BP Portrait Award. Things stepped up a gear in 2010 when the arts collective Liberate Tate began using creative interventions to challenge BP sponsorship of the galleries; and again in 2012, when a group of theatre-lovers (including me) started creating Shakespearean stage invasions before BP-branded plays put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company. This rebel theatre troupe became BP or not BP?, and went on to create around 70 impromptu performances in 11 different oil-sponsored institutions, involving giant props, creative blockades and thousands of people.

Campaigning research groups Platform and Culture Unstained exposed the dirty details of the oil companies’ arts sponsorship deals and built support from high-profile artists and performers, while arts and culture workers organized against the fossil fuel deals through the Public and Commercial Services Union Union and Culture Declares Emergency.

Ironically, the BP-sponsored British Museum provided a powerful opportunity for international solidarity. Many of the communities on the frontlines of oil extraction and climate change are the very same communities with colonially-looted artefacts in its vaults. By teaming up with activists and performers from Mexico, Colombia, West Papua, Iraq and Indigenous Australia, groups were able to highlight these connections and subvert BP’s sponsored exhibitions to tell more honest stories.

SHIFT IN PUBLIC OPINION

This broad-based, collaborative campaign has succeeded in almost completely eradicating oil industry partnerships from UK arts and culture. Alongside a wider ecosystem of actions and campaigns against the fossil fuel sector, these successes may have helped to drive a wider shift. Public opinion in recent years has swung firmly against the oil industry.

The UN climate talks refused direct sponsorship from fossil fuel companies for the first time in Glasgow in 2021, and the British LGBT Awards dropped BP and Shell sponsorship following protests in 2023. Parallel movements to end fossil fuel arts partnerships are picking up pace around the world, with major victories recently in the Netherlands, Canada and Australia.

Of course, there is still more work to do. The London Science Museum still has four fossil fuel partners, including the coal-mining giant Adani. The British Museum, which still has a BP Lecture Theatre, hasn’t ruled out future fossil fuel partnerships and is yet to properly address its colonial legacy.

The UK Art Not Oil movement shows the impact that a determined campaign of creativity, solidarity, and strategic direct action can have. Could it be a model for future victories over the fossil fuel industry?

This article is from the September-October 2023 issue of New Internationalist.