Bad Company: BP, Human Rights and Corporate Crimes

Culture Unstained compiled a report on BP's human rights violations, corporate crimes and the (cultural) organisations still backing BP by renewing sponsorship contracts.

In July 2016, four of the UK’s most iconic cultural institutions – the National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum, the Royal Opera House and the Royal Shakespeare Company – took the controversial decision to sign a new 5-year sponsorship deal with the oil and gas company, BP. Despite mounting pressure to cut their ties to fossil fuels, these museums and galleries chose to retain a close association with BP, lending the company much-needed social legitimacy in a time of growing climate crisis.

The Museums Association’s Code of Ethics states that museums and galleries should ‘seek support from organisations whose ethical values are consistent with those of the museum’, and in order to do that they should, ‘conduct thorough and well documented research to demonstrate that they have understood the nature of the company’s business,
and any claims made against it.’1 By accepting sponsorship from BP, these cultural institutions are making a bold and
public statement: that even after thorough researching into BP's negative human rights and environmental impacts
around the world, they believe it is a company worth endorsing. When BP sponsors a museum or gallery, that
institution is also choosing to publicly endorse BP.