Description
The Viennese Leopold Museum has silently dropped fossil sponsor OMV as of February 2024, being the first cultural institution in Austria to take this step.
This news comes 2 years after activists of Letzte Generation poored fake oil over the Klimt painting 'life and death', bringing the climate crisis debate more than ever on the radar of cultural institutions in Vienna and Austria. The activists pointed out the destruction caused by fossil fuels in general, but also specifically critize Leopold's sponsorship deal with OMV:
"Companies like OMV, for example, sponsor this exhibition; they want to use such sponsorships to clean up their mess, just like the tobacco industry did back then"
As it turned out, the museum was not handing out free, OMV sponsored tickets anymore on Leopold Day, newspaper Der Standard revealed in November that the sponsordeal had in fact been dropped since February.
The same article also revealed that the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Art History Museum) will not renew their partnership with OMV as of January 2025.