Description
Who: Van Gogh museum, Amsterdam
What: Dropped Shell as sponsor after repeated actions by Fossil Free Culture
When: 25 August 2018
After a series of artistic interventions by Fossil Free Culture, the Van Goghmuseum decided to drop its sponsorship deal with Shell. One action consisted of a huge 12-meter banner, dropped from the staircase, and a manifesto recital, just less than three months before ties with Shell were cut. Another intervention consisted of 411 scallop shells marked with ‘carbon-black’ ink spills, installed throughout the museum, marking the 411 parts per million CO2 present in the atmosphere (on May 15, 2018).
Blackout Shell
Another artistic intervention resulted in a video and statement at the Engaged Art Fair in December 2016. The video, called Blackout Shell, showed a hoax intended to provoke fundamental questions: can we afford to look at art that has been stained by oil money? Why is it painful to see an iconic piece of Western culture being damaged, yet we somehow manage to accept the endless spills, destruction of livelihoods and ecologies, and violent repercussions of climate change directly caused by Shell?
