Activists Brought a Trojan Horse to the British Museum and Camped Out in the Galleries Overnight to Protest BP’s Sponsorship

An estimated 1,500 people took
to the British Museum over the weekend to protest the museum’s
continuing ties with the oil giant BP. Climate activists chanting
“BP must fall” occupied the museum overnight on Friday and Saturday
in what is likely the largest protest the museum has ever faced.
The museum itself estimated the crowd at closer to 1,000; a
spokesperson characterized the events as “peaceful and good
natured.”

Still, the museum’s director
Hartwig Fischer said in a statement that the action “is not a
contribution to solving the climate
crisis.” Fischer has
repeatedly defended the museum’s
continued relationship with BP for financial
reasons.

This latest protest against the
oil company began on Friday after activists from the group BP or
not BP? snuck a 13-foot-tall Trojan Horse into the museum’s
courtyard. Their target was the museum’s current “Troy: myth and
reality” exhibition, which is sponsored by BP. “Like
the legendary Trojan Horse, BP’s sponsorship is not a gift but a
cynical way to hide something far more sinister and destructive,”
Sarah Horne, a member
of BP or not BP?, said in a statement.

The Trojan Horse was guarded
overnight by two activists sleeping inside of it. On Saturday,
those activists were joined by an estimated 1,500
protesters. The
activist group is known for its many previous theatrical
interventions in the British Museum. This was the group’s most
elaborate action to date, with activists organizing talks and
performances across the museum, urging it and its trustees to sever
ties to the fossil fuel industry.

The activists this past weekend
relabelled museum objects, chanted, sang, and ripped apart images
of the BP logo. For a
performance they dubbed Monument, protestors made plaster
casts of the arms and legs of participants. Some 60 people
occupied the museum itself on Saturday night.

Kurdish and Turkish activists
were among those to address the crowd, criticizing BP’s
controversial pipeline projects near the site of ancient
Troy. Another of the
protesters, Mamadou Mane, from the Senegalese civil society group
Aar Li Nu Bokk, spoke about BP’s complicity with corruption in
Senegal, paying huge sums in exchange for new drilling licenses.
“With the British Museum still holding artifacts that were once
looted from the African continent, it is perhaps no surprise to see
it celebrating and defending an oil company that shows the same
colonial attitude today,” Mane said in a statement.

Pressure has been mounting on
the museum to sever ties with the oil company after the National
Galleries Scotland and the Royal Shakespeare Company cut links with
BP last year. Ahdaf Soueif, a British Museum
trustee,also resigned in 2019, citing
the controversial partnership as one of her reasons.

The PCS union, which represents
workers from the UK’s cultural institutions, has issued a statement
cosigned by Soueif calling on the institution to end its
relationship with BP and follow the lead set by the UK parliament
and Tate by declaring a climate emergency. “From flooding in
Mozambique to wildfires in Australia, new images appear every day
to drive home what scientific evidence has long made clear: the
climate crisis is here, and urgent, widespread action is needed to
minimize the devastation being wreaked on people’s
lives.”

British Museum director Hartwig
Fischer said in a statement that the museum respects people’s right
to express their views, and shares the protester’s concerns about
climate change. However, he doubled down on the importance of the
institution’s continued relationship with
BP. “The British Museum
offers for millions of people an extraordinary opportunity to
engage with the cultures and histories of humankind. Without
external support and sponsorship this would not be possible,”
Fischer said. “Removing this opportunity from the public is not a
contribution to solving the climate crisis.”

See more images from the mass protest action below.

The post Activists Brought a Trojan Horse to the British
Museum and Camped Out in the Galleries Overnight to Protest BP’s
Sponsorship appeared first on artnet News.