Friends oppose British Museum BP links
'Changing the name of the lecture theatre is the final step for the museum to cut its ties with this murderous company, and a chance to demonstrate support for strong climate leadership that is urgently needed.’
Quakers were among a group of campaigners calling for the British Museum to rename its BP Lecture Hall.
Friend Anya Nanning Ramamurthy, from the UK Student Climate Network, and a longstanding climate campaigner, put her name to a letter signed by eighty prominent artists and researchers.
She told the Friend: ‘For years, BP has used its presence in cultural institutions to paint themselves as a socially-responsible corporation, and cover up their horrific environmental impacts and human rights violations. Changing the name of the lecture theatre is the final step for the museum to cut its ties with this murderous company, and a chance to demonstrate support for strong climate leadership that is urgently needed.’
Other signatories included: Nan Goldin, artist; Gaia Vince, writer and journalist; Bill McGuire, climate scientist; Katherine McAlpine, director of the Brunel Museum; and David Wengrow, anthropologist and co-author of The Dawn of Everything.
The letter was addressed to Hartwig Fischer, the outgoing British Museum director, 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 twenty-seven-year sponsorship deal with the oil giant earlier this year, BP’s name still title’s the venue at the museum. The signatories argue that ‘partnering with such companies lends them an undeserved and dangerous social legitimacy and influence’.
The letter references the museum’s stated goal to become ‘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.
In June, it emerged that the museum had decided that no further exhibitions or other activities would be sponsored by BP. It said there were ‘no other contracts or agreements in effect between the museum and BP’.
BP has been a sponsor of the British Museum since 1996.
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