The critics are unanimous: the British Museum’s new exhibition, The World of Stonehenge, is a triumph. As archaeologists, it’s wonderful for us to see the show achieve such plaudits. But the fact that the exhibition is once again sponsored by the oil and gas supermajor BP brings inevitable disquiet. Hundreds of our colleagues in archaeology, museums and the heritage sector have recently signed a letter asking the museum to end its relationship with BP. The signatories include senior curators and academics from across the UK and beyond. This is a decisive moment for the British Museum: its agreement with BP is due for renewal this year and its future hangs in the balance.
BP has maintained a strategy of sponsoring cultural institutions for decades, as part of its heavy investment in public relations. It’s keen to convince the public – and our policymakers – that it can be trusted to manage the transition to net zero itself. But BP’s programme for “net zero by 2050” relies on massive use of unproved carbon capture technologies and implausible offsetting. The company is continuing to look for new sources of oil and gas, which the International Energy Agency has said cannot be exploited if net zero is to be achieved. BP’s plans also ignore its 20% stake in the Russian oil company Rosneft, which is launching a $134bn project to drill in the Arctic. BP’s activities jeopardise efforts to keep global heating within the 1.5C limit of the Paris climate agreement and avoid yet worse droughts, wildfires and sea level rise.
We don’t know exactly how much money BP provides to the British Museum, although it’s almost certainly less than 1% of the museum’s income. With 2021 profits of £9.5bn, this is small change for BP. But at a time of continuing underinvestment by the government, it’s an amount that matters to the British Museum.
Through this relationship, BP associates its name with values of civilisation, curatorial care and scientific knowledge about the human past and present, even as it embraces policies and strategies that arguably conflict with all these ideals. But this is no relationship of equals. The British Museum has no power to influence BP’s decision-making or speak out against it. On the contrary, as a result of this arrangement, its senior personnel are often required to publicly defend BP’s track record.
We’ve been here before, with debates during the 1980s and 1990s around tobacco and arms company sponsorship. Other potential sponsors exist. And we shouldn’t forget that BP benefits from UK tax breaks worth billions of pounds and has not paid corporation tax on its activities in the North Sea for the past three years, while receiving tax relief of almost £400m, money that could have been spent on supporting renewables or, for that matter, on museums and culture.
Last year, with George Osborne’s appointment as the museum’s chair of trustees, these issues took a worrying new turn. In addition to his role as chair, Osborne is a partner at the boutique advisory firm Robey Warshaw, which counts BP among its major clients. If he does not clearly recuse himself from any future decisions on the relationship with BP, it is hard to see how a potential conflict of interest can be avoided.
Recent investigations into decision-making processes at the British Museum by the campaign group Culture Unstained are worrying for all of us who care about the museum. They find that the chairman’s advisory group exists outside the regular governance structures of the museum, yet has high-level influence. We don’t know who its members are and its meetings are not minuted, but we do know that it enables ongoing contact between very senior corporate representatives, the chair and the director of the museum, Hartwig Fischer.
The British Museum is embarking on an ambitious and very expensive renovation plan. There is much at stake here. Any further deal with BP risks undermining the museum’s reputation for years to come. The generation now in its youth takes a dim view of the fossil fuel industry and those who enable it. BP undoubtedly has cash to spare – but it comes with a price.
The museum’s trustees have a legal duty to protect its reputation. We believe this includes a duty to ensure that any decision on sponsorship renewal is subject to oversight and due diligence, including an independent review of BP’s business practices and suitability as a patron. According to investigations by the group Art Not Oil, when the BP deal was renewed in 2016, it was the director of the museum who made the decision. It now seems imperative for the trustees to take a more active role. They will no doubt be considering why it is that most other major cultural institutions in the UK, including the RSC, Tate and the National Theatre, have renounced fossil fuel sponsorship. They will also be aware that this issue is not going away. On the contrary, highly creative protests against BP’s presence in the museum will continue and public opinion is increasingly in favour of taking strong action on climate change. The open letter signed by our colleagues suggests that professional opinion in the heritage sector has moved firmly in the same direction.
Our understanding of humanity’s past matters for our future. The remains of our shared past, and how they are used, matter deeply for that future too. By continuing to accept fossil fuel sponsorship, the British Museum has become an outlier when it should be a leader within its sector. Its trustees now have a vital window of opportunity in which to defend the museum’s future and its reputation.
• Natasha Reynolds is a palaeolithic archaeologist and an honorary researcher at the University of Bordeaux and David Wengrow is a British archaeologist and professor of comparative archaeology at University College London
