protests against cooperation gallery
Tate and British Petroleum
Source: guardian.co.uk

Tate decided to revise its 20-year collaboration with the company British Petroleum for active public protests, including environmentalists and artists. It all started last year, when the Tate held a celebration in honor of its main evening for the past 20 years, the sponsor British Petroleum on the background of the scandal surrounding the oil platform explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, BP . More than 150 prominent figures of culture appealed to the British newspaper The Guardian with a letter in which they expressed their indignation at the conduct of a gala evening. activists picketed the entrance to the gallery, but the most ardent defenders of nature poured at the entrance and the lobby reminiscent of molasses oil, as sketched above bird feathers. Those who have made their way inside, produced in the Turbine Hall of helium balloons with rotten fish inside, that workers had to shoot air rifles.

Recently, Tate director Nicholas Serota (Nicholas Serota) said that the management of the gallery soon decide whether to extend the contract with BP. In December, he filed a petition compiled by activist groups "platform", "Free Tate" and "Art is not oil," and signed by eight thousand employees and visitors to the gallery. In response, Serota said: "You can hardly surprising message that the issue of support from the BP is being seriously discussed the last two trustees year. The Board of Trustees, and Committee on Ethical Standards of Conduct, organized by this Council four years ago, carefully consider the matter. "The trustees have concluded that using the money BP was able to realize a lot of good beginnings for the gallery and its visitors. The current three-year contract Tate with BP expires in 2012.

Group "Art is not oil» (Art Not Oil) also protested against the financial support of BP's cultural Olympiad and the festival of "London 2012." solidarity with their position Artists urged to put their work on the website "Gallery Cultural Olympiad without BP." Portal declares that "the Olympics gives us [BP] an excellent opportunity to conduct an aggressive rebranding».

The company annually allocates British Petroleum More than 1 million pounds to help British art institutions, including the National Gallery and the Royal Opera House. Now, sponsorship is more and more disputes as public financing of cultural institutions was strongly reduced. Last week, the two poets have refused to fight for the poetic prize Thomas Stearns Eliot as a sign of protest against its main sponsor - an investment company Aurum Funds. Founders Award signed a contract with Aurum Funds after the state denied them funding. On Thursday, Minister of Culture, Jeremy Hunt (Jeremy Hunt) called on artists to support those who provide them with funds, it "will promote good corporate behavior," - he wrote in the New Culture Forum. Hunt called the promotion of charity one of the priorities for the arts.

Last week, the index of National Campaign for the Arts showed that donations to cultural institutions of businesses from 2007 to 2010 decreased by 17 percent. However, the Minister Hunt hopes that next year this figure will increase charity by 6 percent.

BP representatives have that they still "have an obligation" to the cultural Olympiad and the festival of "London 2012." However comment cooperation with Tate refused to clarify the situation with the extension of the contract. The organizers of the cultural Olympiad stated that the financial support of BP's treasure.

Prepared by Mary Onuchina, AI

Sources : guardian.co.uk , artinvestment.ru