Description
Who: Rijksmuseum Boerhaave Leiden, a promient eductional science museum
What: Cut ties with main sponsor Shell
When: January 2022
The name of Shell is no longer listed as 'main sponsor' on the sponsors board of the Rijksmuseum Boerhaave. Shell Netherlands CEO Marjan van Loon is no longer ambassador of the museum. And the video with which the museum placed a 'greenwashing' Marjan van Loon on the same pedestal as Dutch Nobel Prize winners has been removed from the permanent collection about 100 years of high-profile science. Rein Willems (ex-Shell CEO of Shell Netherlands and climate denier) also disappeared from the museum's Supervisory Board. With this, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave has met all the requirements of Fossil Free Education and XR Leiden.
“Contaminated with Shell”
Both groups campaigned against Shell's sponsorship and the influence that the oil multinational thus bought on the permanent collection. Fossil Free Education put the problem on the map in 2019 with an opinion article in the Volkskrant: Boerhaave can be used as an extension of Shell's marketing machine. This led to parliamentary questions and questions from the council in Leiden. XR Leiden has carried out various campaigns at the museum over the years. Together with Code Rood, both groups conducted a successful campaign “Infected with Shell” during the opening of the exhibition 'Infected' by King Willem-Alexander. After that action followed a conversation in which the director of the museum, Amito Haarhuis, defended the relationship with Shell.
Research
XR Leiden and Fossil Free Education call it striking that the Shell video was removed from the museum after the partnership with Shell ended, while director Haarhuis claimed that Shell had no influence on the exhibitions. “This proves that sponsors do influence the content of museums.” In 2021, scientists from Utrecht University published a study into the influence of fossil sponsors on the content of the exhibition of the Boerhaave and two other museums. In their exhibitions, “you see that companies want to profile themselves as the bringers of modernity. And that the fossil industry is simply necessary for economic growth.”
