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Shortly after dawn on Friday, 7 February, eco activists smuggled a four-metre Trojan Horse constructed from reclaimed timber into the grand courtyard in front of the British Museum.

Their cause? Helen Glynn, the head of campaign group, BP Or Not BP? explained that the protests were inspired by the museum’s current blockbuster exhibition Troy: Myth and Reality. ‘The Trojan Horse is the perfect metaphor for BP sponsorship. On its surface the sponsorship looks like a generous gift, but inside lurks death and destruction.’

From the sugar empire that gave its name to the Tate gallery to patrons accused of building fortunes on the back of addictive opioids and energy companies blamed for contributing to the global climate crisis, the world’s cultural institutions have, for a long time, been supported by funds from sources that are not always blemish-free in their reputations. Yet this money often does an incredible amount of good. Oil giants may not instil the same warm glow as artists, but the stark truth is that as a principal sponsor of more than 23 years, BP money has helped 6 million visitors to view British Museum exhibitions, both in Bloomsbury and further afield. However, the days of taking money and glossing over its provenance appear to be numbered for these institutions.

‘For unethical corporations such as oil and arms companies, cultural sponsorship is a cheap and effective way of cleaning up their toxic reputations,’ says a spokesperson for campaign and research group, Culture Unstained. ‘For what is effectively their loose change, these firms buy a social legitimacy they don’t deserve by associating their brands with our trusted museums and galleries. These sponsorship deals have nothing to do with philanthropy — they are a cheap form of advertising, a cost-effective way for unethical industries to boost their image.’

Interestingly, far from suppressing the Trojan Horse protest, the British Museum director Hartwig Fischer welcomed the chance to explore a difficult topic in the art world. Acknowledging the ‘phase of great urgency’ we are entering in relation to climate change, Fischer describes the protests as ‘a contribution to making all of us more and more aware of these challenges. I think the protests add their voice within this very complex situation.’

BP seems very aware of this need for ‘urgency’ as, a week after the protest, its CEO, Bernard Looney, announced that the firm was aiming to become a net zero emissions company by 2050 or sooner. ‘The world’s carbon budget is finite and running out fast; we need a rapid transition to net zero. We all want energy that is reliable and affordable, but that is no longer enough. It must also be cleaner,’ he explained.

The British Museum’s liberal policy towards the protests reflects feelings among its employees. After the protest, the PCS trade union, which represents the institution’s workers, issued an open letter on Twitter co-signed by former museum trustee Ahdaf Soueif, stating, ‘Every day [the British Museum] continues to endorse BP it collaborates in their ecocide. This must end,’ adding the museum ‘owes it to its staff, its visitors and its future to play a responsible role in the greatest challenge facing society’.

Jane Morris, editor-at-large of The Art Newspaper, points out that concerns about corporate art sponsorship are nothing new: ‘The issue of whether or not sponsors are appropriate for museums flares up periodically. The first time I remember it was a George Stubbs exhibition at Tate sponsored by an arms manufacturer in 1984.’ The following decade, Tate’s board of trustees decided they would not accept sponsorship from manufacturers of tobacco or arms, or companies with a majority interest in South Africa.

Last summer, encouraged by the artist Olafur Eliasson then exhibiting at the gallery, Tate formally declared a climate emergency. ‘As an organisation that works with living artists, we should respond to and amplify their concerns,’ the gallery explained. ‘And, as our audiences and communities across the world confront climate extinction, so we must shine a spotlight on this critical issue through art.’

Which is all very well, but of course this means Tate must ensure sponsorship is spotless in its provenance, too. Which could rule out, well, quite a lot of companies, really. ‘It is important that the position of Tate’s corporate partners is coherently aligned with all of our values,’ says Tate director, Maria Balshaw. More than 70 per cent of the museum’s funding is now self-generated: a combination of retail, memberships, ticket sales and funds raised ‘from individuals, public bodies, foundations and corporate supporters both within the UK and internationally’.

In the past financial year, Tate’s operational income was £120,238,000 of which £35,126,000 was received as Grant in Aid. Tate infamously hired a ‘head of coffee’ recently; to put it in liquid terms, it would need to shift an ocean’s worth of oat milk flat whites to make up the £85m difference, which is why institutions such as Tate have become so reliant on sponsorship.

With exhibitions planned many years ahead, all of the directors interviewed explained that they need not only funds, but also stability. ‘Exhibitions like Troy can only be done when we have long-term partnerships that guarantee planning security,’ says Fischer. ‘These are big investments and they’re risky.’

There has been a significant change to museum funding in recent decades. ‘In the 1990s, most big museums were about 80 per cent state funded,’ says Morris. ‘Since then museums have expanded, in some cases massively, while in the same period government grants have stood still and been cut.’ Among those institutions to have stepped away from contested sponsors, protest and programming can feel interlinked. Artists speaking out against so-called ‘dirty money’ have shifted the sponsorship debate. ‘Contemporary museums can’t fall out with the world’s leading artists,’ she says.

Following her own experience of addiction, the eminent photographic artist Nan Goldin founded the pressure group Pain (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) in 2017, targeting the Sackler family owners of Purdue Pharma, the company that manufactures the opioid painkiller OxyContin. They are, crucially, some of the biggest donors to art institutions in the world, with galleries in their name at both the Royal Academy and Serpentine. Pain has staged protests at museums including the Louvre in Paris, and the Guggenheim and Moma in New York. In November, Goldin and Pain staged a ‘die-in’ at the Sackler Courtyard of the V&A.

Last March the National Portrait Gallery decided not to accept a £1 million gift from the Sackler family after a statement from Goldin saying that she had ‘been invited to have a retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery and... told them I would not do it if they take the Sackler money’.

A statement issued by the Sackler family at the time read: ‘Allegations against family members are vigorously denied, but to avoid being a distraction for the NPG, we have decided not to proceed at this time with the donation.’

The influential German artist Hito Steyerl also spoke out against Sackler funding at the Serpentine last summer. Some 80 artists, among them Antony Gormley, Rachel Whiteread, Anish Kapoor, Gillian Wearing and Mark Wallinger, have also written to the National Portrait Gallery asking it to end BP’s sponsorship of its annual portrait award.

For galleries such as Tate, Serpentine and the National Portrait Gallery, the relationship between artists and donors is delicate and they need only look across the Atlantic to see how effectively artists can leverage it. Last July, Warren B Kanders, vice-chairman of the board of New York’s Whitney Museum and a major donor, resigned after artists threatened to remove their work from the Whitney Biennial, a prestigious survey of contemporary art. The objection was to Kanders’ ownership of Safariland Group, a maker of ‘law enforcement products’ including tear gas.

‘The targeted campaign of attacks against me and my company that has been waged these past several months has threatened to undermine the important work of the Whitney,’ Kanders wrote in his resignation letter. ‘I joined this board to help the museum prosper. I do not wish to play a role, however inadvertent, in its demise.’

Directors of those museums in which contemporary art is less central to their programming are rather more forthright in their defence of sponsors. ‘Museums need more money to thrive. Short sentence, stark truth,’ says Sir Ian Blatchford, director and chief executive of the Science Museum Group. ‘Museums also need to listen to all their audiences and not only those who make the most noise.’ Sir Ian has seen his museums’ public funding decrease by a third in real terms over the past decade. While he says he ‘will go on making a robust case for increased support from central and local government’, he doesn’t agree ‘for a second with those who think free museums should be fully funded by government and live in splendid isolation’.

The Science Museum has been criticised for accepting sponsorship from energy firms. ‘Ian Blatchford’s defence of his oil sponsors is both ethically incoherent and out of touch with the wider sector,’ says Culture Unstained, a campaigning organisation. ‘While other cultural organisations are cutting their ties to fossil fuels, he is backing those that helped to cause the climate crisis.’

‘I strongly believe that our sector mustn’t lose its collective nerve,’ says Sir Ian. ‘We need to plot our way through the challenges ahead with imagination and ambition. We need to be transparent about who we’re working with and we need to trust our engaged, intelligent and thoughtful audiences to make up their own minds.’

It’s a robust sentiment echoed by Fischer: ‘BP is part of the British economy and it has committed to the Paris climate goals, net zero, and will have to be part of delivering these goals together with other businesses, finance and science, and government.’

Since 2001, Britain’s national museums have committed to free entry. Through sponsorship deals, one might argue that they have shifted their business model from selling access to their art to selling access to their audience. As more corporate sponsors and individual donors are scrutinised and found wanting, we find ourselves ever closer to an ethical dilemma between the great good of free entry and the contortions required to maintain it.