Climate scientists and cultural figures called on national history and science museums on Tuesday to sever their ties to the fossil fuel industry, singling out a major patron from the Koch family of conservative oil billionaires.



Corporate sponsorships from the fossil fuel industry threatened the credibility of important institutions and eroded the public trust, the scientists said in a letter.

“We are concerned that the integrity of these institutions is compromised by association with special interests who obfuscate climate science, fight environmental regulation, oppose clean energy legislation, and seek to ease limits on industrial pollution,” the letter signed by nearly three dozen scientists and museum professionals said.

The letter explicitly targeted David Koch, a trustee and leading donor and exhibit sponsor of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who has also spent at least $67m (£45m) funding climate denial front groups.

“When some of the biggest contributors to climate change and funders of misinformation on climate science sponsor exhibitions in museums of science and natural history, they undermine public confidence in the validity of the institutions responsible for transmitting scientific knowledge,” the letter said.

Koch and the Smithsonian natural history museum came under attack five years ago for an exhibit sponsored by the billionaire which failed to connect the burning of fossil fuels to climate change.

The letter – which raises similar arguments to the campaign against BP corporate sponsorship of the Tate Modern – was endorsed by a roster of leading scientists including the Nobel laureate, Eric Chivian, climate scientists James Hansen, Michael Mann, and a number of museum professionals.

In April, campaigners will ask the American Museum of Natural History to remove Koch as a trustee.

The letter represents the opening of a new front in the fossil fuel divestment campaign, which originated in college campuses and has since spread to charitable foundations, pension funds, and now museums.

The Guardian supports the campaign, and has called on the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation to divest from coal, oil and gas.

Campaigners said the gravity of the climate crisis compelled museums to take a stand against the fossil fuel industry. “Beyond the need to inform and educate people about science, we have a moral obligation to get on the right side of the issue of global warming,” said James Powell, a former director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, who signed the letter.



The letter is being released amid growing concern about the influence of corporate funding on academic and cultural institutions. Last month, it emerged that a Harvard-Smithsonian astronomer, Willie Soon, received $1.25m from industry sources, including the Kochs, for research denying a human role in climate change – and concealed the sources of that funding from scientific journals.

Beka Economopoulos, the founder of the Natural History Museum project and the organiser of the petition, said such associations, in the form of corporate sponsorships or board memberships, made it easier for fossil fuel companies to put off action on climate change and as such were “morally wrong”.

“Regardless of whether exhibits are compromised or not – climate deniers and fossil fuel companies have no business in museums of science and natural history,” she said in an email. “They green their image while they bankroll efforts to obstruct action on climate change.”

Roberto Lebron, a spokesman for the American Museum of Natural History, said in an email: “Donors do not determine the interpretation or presentation of scientific content.”

The Smithsonian also said patrons had no influence on exhibits. “Donors and supporters have no influence on the content or presentation of Smithsonian exhibitions, regardless of their private interests.” Koch Industries did not respond to requests for comment.

In the case of the Koch family, the contradictions between the museums’ missions and their sources of funding were especially stark, supporters of the letter said.

“They wouldn’t accept money from Philip Morris and Atria to do an exhibit on respiratory health. They wouldn’t do that,” said Chivian. “So how could they accept money from someone spending tens of millions of dollars undermining the science on the greatest threat we have ever faced.”

Koch Industries, the largest privately held oil company and a major investor in Canada’s tar sands, has been a major source of carbon pollution. Koch Industries were also the biggest spenders of any oil and gas company in the midterm elections, outspending Exxon, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets website.

The Kochs have also been leading funders of climate denial, spending at least $67m since 1997 to bankroll ultra-conservative thinktanks such as the Heartland Institute, which denies the existence of climate change and lobbies against environmental regulations, the letter says.

In 2010, the New Yorker reported that an exhibit – in the David H Koch hall of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC – minimised the role of fossil fuels in causing climate change, and suggested humans would easily adapt to a climate-altered future.

In 2006, US government scientists accused the Smithsonian of bowing to political pressure from Bush administration officials and Congress by injecting a line about “scientific uncertainty” surrounding climate change in an exhibit about the Arctic.

July 2011: Reverend Billy leads the congregation out of Tate Modern holding up an oil-soaked BP logo. Photograph: Peter Marshall/Corbis

Robert Janes, a retired museum manager in Alberta who also signed the letter, accused museums of being “asleep at the wheel” both on the dangers of climate change, and the unseen influence of oil industry sponsorship.

“There is this magical belief in the museum world that somehow if you take money even if it comes from corporate malfeasance … it becomes morally pure and not a problem and of course that’s nonsense.”

The campaign parallels the efforts against the Tate Modern in 2010, in the aftermath of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.



Organisers said the effort was aimed at cutting off a source of positive PR for BP.

“We thought it was a fairly obvious contradiction for an apparently progressive institution to still be taking money from oil, when it was really obvious that this company was responsible for a massive ongoing disaster and for climate change,” said Anna Galkina, one of the organisers of the Divest Tate campaign.

In a victory for campaigners, the Tate was compelled last December to disclose the extent of BP funding over the years. The sums were relatively small. BP contributed just 0.5% of the Tate’s budget from 1990 to 2006, according to the Tate.

However, Galkina argued BP reaped big benefits in terms of positive PR and advertising aimed at elite audiences of museum visitors.