The British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and The National Gallery have backed a letter calling for an end to the “relentless negativity” around the corporate sponsorship of arts projects. The letter, published recently in the Financial Times and written by Alistair Spalding and Britannia Morton, co-chief executives of Sadler’s Wells, is supported by ten UK arts organisations in total.
It marks the one-year anniversary of the funding controversy involving Baillie Gifford, the Scottish asset management company that came under fire for its ties to the fossil fuel industry and Israel. In May last year, following protests, partnerships were ended between Baillie Gifford and nine book festivals—including Hay festival, Edinburgh international Book Festival and Cheltenham Literature Festival.
The letter states: “Partnering with businesses ensures our work goes further and has a greater impact. It adds more value and enables growth, ambition and risk taking.
“Through partnerships, arts organisations also actively engage with the organisations that shape how we live...Our museums, theatres, festivals and artists need to operate within the economic structures in which society operates.”
Across the arts and culture sector, it is not understood that working in partnership with businesses is a proactive choice, add Spalding and Morton, stressing that “corporate sponsorship can never provide a replacement for public funding”.
The Science Museum Group, which has been criticised for accepting sponsorship from the fossil fuel-linked sponsors BP and the Indian coal giant Adani Group, also supports the letter. When asked to comment further, a group spokesman says that the letter “speaks for itself”.
Ethical issues around corporate funding and philanthropy continue to polarise museum professionals. In the wake of the Baillie Gifford row, the National Galleries of Scotland said it would continue to accept sponsorship from the company.
Meanwhile Maria Balshaw, the director of Tate—which did not sign the recent letter—criticised BP’s £50m sponsorship deal with the British Museum, saying that “the public has moved to a position where they think [the deal] is inappropriate”. The money from the oil and gas giant is due to kick start fundraising for the British Museum’s ambitious masterplan.
The arts communications specialist Martin Prendergast says in response to the letter: “Artists and arts institutions need funds to imagine different futures. I fundamentally believe in the right to protest. For me the causes are right but the targets are wrong." The creative producer Naomi Russell says: “I think protest and resistance drive change and historically this has great precedent. That can be uncomfortable for the powers and established structures.”
