Why shouldn’t the British Museum take BP’s cash?

Three cheers for the British Museum, which has just announced a new £50 million sponsorship deal with the oil giant BP. The news is a surprise because oil and gas companies are increasingly treated as lepers by the culture sector. The Royal Opera House, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Tate are just some of the elite organisations that have shamelessly abandoned longstanding funding relationships with BP following pressure from environmental campaigners. The British Museum deserves credit for standing its ground when few others have dared.

The museum says the ten-year deal, believed to be the biggest in its history, will help to kickstart its £1 billion master plan to refurbish and redisplay its permanent collections. Its grade I-listed building is also in urgent need of renovation. In a clever move, the museum released polling it commissioned, which suggested 59 per cent of the public were in favour of museums accepting donations from the oil and gas sector, and preferred corporate donations over taxpayers’ money.