Oil companies are sponsoring the arts around the world on an “epidemic” scale as a cynical PR strategy to improve their reputation, a new book argues.
Mel Evans, a campaigner who five years ago was one of two activists to gatecrash Tate Britain’s summer party and pour molasses on the floor of the gallery, has written Artwash, which explores the scale and impact of oil arts sponsorship. It is published on Monday to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Evans argues that oil companies sponsor the arts for two reasons. In London, for example, BP wants the prestige of being associated with the UK’s leading arts organisations. Companies also try to sponsor the arts where they face local protests.
Evans said Shell had tried to sponsor folk festivals on the west coast of Ireland, where their Rossport gas pipeline has been a controversial issue for more than a decade. Statoil sponsors art projects in Canada because it is “trying to secure a political relationship in order to access the tar sands there”.
“If we are to consider a future beyond fossil fuel and that’s what the divestment movement and climate movement is looking towards, we can’t let our minds be filtered by big oil. Corporate sponsorship poses a threat to us … it is a cynical PR strategy.
“Oil companies like BP don’t do this sponsorship generously, they do it because they desperately want an association with galleries like Tate and the British Museum in order to cover up damage that they are doing around the world and ‘artwash’ their image. They don’t deserve this public image scoring and we want to take that away from them.”
The book argues that the campaigns against oil sponsorship resonate with historic campaigns to end tobacco and arms sponsorship of cultural events.
In the UK, BP has a five-year, £10m sponsorship deal with Tate Britain, the Royal Opera House, British Museum and National Portrait Gallery that is due to expire in 2017.
All four institutions vigorously defend the association. Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum said: “BP has been by far our best corporate friend, certainly our longest standing and most faithful corporate friend. For the last 15 years or so BP have been a major factor in enabling the museum to be the museum it is today – putting on major exhibitions in London, sending them to the regions and operating internationally.
“What would you want companies to do with their profits? Do you want them to spend them in a way that benefits the public or not?
Of course BP are doing this because they think it is good for them as well as out of a sense of corporate responsibility – but do you not want companies to exercise social responsibility by doing things that help big institutions serve the public better?”
Sir Nicholas Serota, the director of Tate, asked if the protesters wanted BP to give up all its charitable activity. He said: “BP is a company working worldwide who have a special interest in the UK and they give quite large sums of money to the arts, they give much larger sums of money to charities. If we’re looking at BP’s sponsorship of the arts, we should be looking at BP’s sponsorship of a vast range of community and social facilities across the country.
“Those people who campaign should be perhaps looking at money which goes to other causes should be called into question.”
He said BP had been sponsoring the arts for more than 25 years, adding: “They have not significantly increased the sum as a result of poor publicity that they have had elsewhere, it has been a consistent practice to put large sums of money into the arts and other causes … they put a large sum of money into the London Olympics for instance.”
Campaigners argue that the money Tate gets from BP is an “embarrassingly small” amount and this year won a legal battle for the gallery to reveal how much money it received over a 17-year period. The total was £3.8m, given in annual amounts varying between £150,000 and £330,000 – an average of £224,000 a year. The money helps pays for Tate Britain’s permanent collection.
“If you look at it against the sums of money we get from other companies it is certainly not embarrassingly small,” said Serota. “At Tate Britain it represents something like 20% of our sponsorship income, that is a significant sum of money and it is a material sum in terms of what we are able to present to the public.
“If you look at other national collections or museums there are very few if any companies sponsoring the bedrock of work in terms of showing collections. Most are attached to much more high-profile activity and exhibitions. The fact that BP are prepared to put this money on what is seen as the bedrock activity of Tate is to their credit. They could probably get a much higher profile if they were to sponsor an individual exhibition.”
Serota said there had been a 30% reduction in grant in aid since 2010, which means Tate has to raise an extra £10m a year, and that BP’s contribution is a “significant element”.
Alex Beard, the Royal Opera House’s chief executive and the former deputy director of Tate, rejected any suggestion that BP’s money would be easily replaceable. “That is patently obviously not the case,” he said. “Our artistic ambition inevitably outstrips the available level of resource and if it didn’t it would be time to hand the keys over to someone else.”
There are always too many ideas to fund and not enough donors with the cash, he added. Beard said BP was one of a number of long-term partners – including Coutts and Deloitte, who “have been with us all the way”.
“BP have stuck with the Royal Opera House through thick and thin over, in our case, 25 years and they have responded in changes to what our artistic ambitions have been and how we want to engage with audiences.”
BP, meanwhile, says it is proud of its arts sponsorship, calling its sponsorship of the four organisations “one of the most significant long-term corporate investments in UK arts and culture”.
A BP spokesman said: “We are aware that some disagree with our support for these institutions. But as a major company headquartered in the UK, we believe it is right that we contribute to the wider community, and not only through our business activities. Having long-term relationships helps to develop partnerships that are beneficial to both the institution and BP.”
Evans, meanwhile, hopes her book will be a call to arms for a movement that was growing rapidly around the world. She said there were campaigns emerging in Norway, US, Canada, Brazil. “I hope Artwash can consolidate the arguments that we are all articulating and mobilise more and more artists and cultural workers who want to preserve the sector from the hands of big oil.”
