Institutions Trust Institutions Critiques by Artists of the BP/Tate Partnership

Introduction

A leading news story of 2010—the so-called Gulf of Mexico catastrophe (also labeled a crisis, disaster, or tragedy in business and financial press reporting) —occurred on April 20th when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, one of BP’s offshore rigs outsourced to Transocean and Halliburton, burst into flames. Eleven died and the worst oil spill in the US history began. The oil well was not capped until mid-September (153 days later). The court case, which started in 2012 in New Orleans, is expected to be the biggest civil damages trial to date. An incidental consequence of this event—indeed the focus of this article—is a reconsideration of the relationships between business and the arts. Business and the arts are perceived to be natural allies, yet the significance of corporate arts sponsorship is a result of political and social changes during the last several decades. Tate’s partnership with BP has been the focus of scrutiny by contemporary artists and activists who ask viewers to consider the multinational corporation—in this instance BP—as a social institution. At the same time, the art institution—Tate, for example—has been confronted with the claim that it is “not sufficiently committed to, let alone realizing or fulfilling, the pursuit of publicness that brought it into being in the first place” (Alberro and Stimson 2009, 3). BP has been cast as not being a socially responsible corporation, with Tate drawn into a carbon-based economy of arts institutions lending weight to oil and gas companies.

Exposing relationships between the largest arts institutions and multinational corporations has been part of the aesthetic practice of Hans Haacke (b. 1936; see Haacke 1986). Indeed the title of this article—“institutions trust institutions”—is appropriated from Brian Wallis’s (1986a) reference to Haacke, a pioneer of institutional critique, who has challenged the reproduction of the relations of domination expressed and legitimatized in the cultural field since the 1970s. Tate’s Summer Party (June 28, 2010), which marked two decades of BP support of British art at Tate, became a focus of attention for artists traveling under the flag of institutional critique. Why and how they have responded is explored in this article.

“Work in marketing and society must,” according to Wilkie and Moore (2012, 70), “examine and reflect the substantive domain strongly.” This means real-world phenomenon and problems. The BP/Tate partnership serves as a point of reference, does the BP logo represent a toxic stain on Tate international reputation? Yet broader questions are also raised, what is the proper relationship between business and the arts? How do arts organizations know “where to draw the line”? How do forms of resistance by artists bear on social change? Preliminary responses help to formulate what arts and business institutions we want.

The subtitle, “critiques by artists of the BP/Tate partnership,” helps to structure the article. This means that the collaborative sponsorship arrangement is, as a marketing activity between BP and Tate, examined from a macro perspective (Dholakia 2012). According to Hirschman (1983, 49), “multiple perspectives on social issues are useful in a democratic society.” This wider lens aims to benefit society as a whole rather than the firms participating in the marketing activity (Wilkie and Moore 1999, 213). In lieu of an atomistic, micro focus there is an opportunity, as suggested by Wilkie and Moore (2012, 67), to address larger questions having to do with “marketing as a provisioning system for society.” The next section situates institutional critique within the remit of macromarketing. Artists protesting Tate’s 2010 Summer Party are viewed in light of BP’s sponsorship of Tate following the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe. The “consciousness industry,” as advanced by Hans Magnus Enzensberger (1982 [1962]), is used to locate our discussions on arts sponsorship as an example of the privatization of public property and the corporatization of society. Both BP’s and Tate’s narratives as brands including a partnership arrangement of two decades are presented. This leads to a claim—“institutions trust institutions”—that as the interests of arts institutions and multinational capitalism become intertwined, the less art and the arts can play an emancipatory and critical role. The penultimate section suggests that the BP/Tate partnership remains contested: artists continue to protest Tate’s support of BP; moreover, BP continues to be significant in a carbon-based economy.

Institutional Critique and Macromaketing

Institutional critique is a term for an art practice by artists and activists beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s and continuing to the present (see, for example, Alberro and Stimson 2009; Raunig 2008; Raunig and Ray 2009; Sholette 1999, 2000; Stimson and Sholette 2006). It is part of “slicing and dicing the offspring of art under the rubric of conceptualism,” according to artist Martha Rosler (2010, 12) who observes that “some approaches favour analyses and symbolic ‘interventions’ into the institution in question, others more externalised, publicly visible actions.” An initial focus of institutional critique was the public art museum and the commercial gallery system. There was a challenge to the reproduction of the relations of domination expressed and legitimatized in the cultural field. Shifting relations between institutions and critique have occurred within institutional critique during the ensuing decades to reflect evolving political and artistic practices. As illustrated by the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies (2008), wider social change beyond the field of art is desired. For example, Gerald Raunig (2008) posits that “critique must also be seen as a search for alternative forms of living,” whereas Chantal Mouffe (2008) focuses on “critique as a counter-hegemonic intervention,” which means “critique as engagement with” relations between social criticism and radical politics.

Haacke is a pioneering figure of institutional critique (see Buchloh 1990). He asks, What are the political, economic, and ideological interests that intervene and interfere in the production of public culture? What is lost when the art institution is infiltrated by political and corporate concerns? In addressing these questions, Haacke probes the rationale of art institutions. For example, in MetroMobiltan (1985), Haacke drew attention to the unease he felt in the relationship—an awkward conflation as expressed in the title—between Mobil Oil (now ExxonMobil) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. References are made to a brochure distributed by the Met’s Corporate Patrons Program—the first one in the United States—and Mobil’s activity in supporting recent Met exhibitions including ancient Nigerian art and New Zealand tribal art. At the same time, Haacke included public statements by Mobil to oppose demands to terminate petroleum supplies to the South African police and military. Haacke tackles contemporary political issues—apartheid in the case of MetroMobiltan—even though he is not so naive as to believe that change will be a direct result of his works of art. However, by exposing the dependence of leading arts institutions on multinational corporations, Haacke presents business sponsorship as a form of social lubrication for commercial interests.

Haacke’s institutional critique is a form of making art that explores the workings of art museums including the role of funding, sponsorship, and donations (see his dialogue, published as Free Exchange, with Pierre Bourdieu, Bourdieu and Haacke 1995; and Haacke 2002 in memory to Bourdieu). Haacke’s practice has influenced other prominent contemporary artists such as Andrea Fraser (2002), the Guerrilla Girls (Chadwick 1995), and Carey Young (Buchart and Nestler 2010; Godfrey 2008) who are all represented in Tate’s permanent collection. Haacke’s supporters argue that he is asking the right questions in the right places at the right times. However, an implied criticism of Haacke has been aired by Alberro and Stimson (2009), in their anthology of artists’ writings, that Haacke’s form of institutional critique is most legible by those operating within the field of art.

Newer practitioners of institutional critique have emerged to reflect evolving political agendas and artistic practices. In the United Kingdom, this has been expressed by the likes of Platform, Art Not Oil, and Liberate Tate (see Clarke et al. 2011). In these three examples of collectives of artists (and also environmentalists, human rights campaigners, educationalists, and community activists), particular attention is devoted to climate change and the role of Big Oil in sponsoring the arts in the United Kingdom:

Platform (2012) describes itself as “promoting creative processes of democratic engagement to advance social and ecological justice;”

Platform’s mandate is grounded in the 4Cs of carbon, capital, climate, and culture. Art Not Oil, a project of Rising Tide UK, has campaigned against Big Oil cultural sponsorship since 2004. Art Not Oil (2012),

It is designed in part to paint a truer portrait of an oil company than the caring image manufactured by events such as the BP Portrait Award [at the National Portrait Gallery] . . . and other such “cultural activities” of the multinationals which also happen to divert public attention away from their actual activities.

Platform, Art Not Oil, and Liberate Tate seek to have a reach beyond disarticulating the operation of the art institution from within. The role of what Rosler (2010, 1) calls “political and socio-critical art” can play in counteracting the damage of Big Oil such as BP is a point of reference. These collective, activist groups of artists bearing radical agendas and cultural politics resonate with Haacke, but they also distance and reject parts of the institutional critique legacy. There is a deliberate intention to replace individualized production with a more collectivist and anonymous practice. Collaboration is important, according to artist Gregory Sholette (1999, 2), artists and would-be artists “self-institutionalize” themselves to produce collaborative or collective works that can serve as interventions and disruptions. “Evidence that control over the means of artistic production not only is not the exclusive domain of collectors and dealers, curators or critics, but it is they who have appropriated this role from artists themselves” (Sholette 1999, 11). Public demonstrations, including techniques of shock and transgression challenging the reigning paradigms of economic control and domination, are included in their artistic practices (Bradley and Esche 2007). This is about the transformation of audiences by drawing closer links between art and life (Thompson 2004). In addition, dematerialization—production that resists the special material valuation of the work of art—represents an attempt to abolish the object status and commodity form of artworks.

Institutional critique falls within the “creative forces in marketing” identified by Bartels and Jenkins (1977) in helping to articulate subject areas for macromarketing. Institutional critique represents a fusion of aesthetic and ideological creativity. This expands Hirschman’s (1983) identification of “artists” and “ideologists” as two broad classes of producers removed from the marketing concept. This acknowledges a similar “intrinsic value” of institutional critique practitioners that “they challenge consumers in ways that they may not want to be challenged” (Hirschman 1983, 49). Moreover, institutional critique is part of “the arts for marketing” advanced by Brown and Patterson (2000) as an inversion of the managerialist mandate “marketing for the arts.” Artists have responsibilities, according to Platform (2009), “If we take responsibility as human beings [for climate change in the form of our own greenhouse gas emissions], how can that not shape our artistic practice? There is an overlap between politics and aesthetics.” Hirschman (1983, 49) notes “the potential for social change and intellectual diversity.”

The critique by artists of the BP/Tate partnership invites a macromarketing perspective. As Hunt (2011, 200) reminds us, macromarketing refers to the study of marketing systems; the impact and consequences of marketing systems on society; and the impact and consequences of society on marketing systems. “Aesthetic and ideological products are among the most important and intrinsically useful class of phenomena for marketers to investigate” (Hirschman 1983, 53). Dholakia (2012, 222) advocates a “critical–radical” research space based on a macro perspective: knowledge is about unmasking false beliefs and creating alternatives; the philosophical orientation is open and eclectic; and there are wider aims of emancipation, resistance, and transformation. Given the current paradigm of neoliberalism, with the free market capable of providing all human needs, artist Carey Young (in Buchart and Nestler 2010) deems it vital that artists discuss, problematize, and criticize the “collapsing categories between business, politics, and culture.” Developing a culture of resistance is a way to start dismantling the domination of capital with art serving as a social pacifier.

Artists Protesting Tate’s 2010 Summer Party

Tate’s annual Summer Party is a major social event. In 2010, it was designated to celebrate “20 years of BP support BP British Art Displays, 1500–2010” (see Figure 1). The timing was unfortunate for Tate and BP, given the events following April 20, 2010: oil continued to spill from the Deepwater Horizon well, and BP’s share price dropped 50 percent during the intervening period of ten weeks (from 655.40p (pence) on April 16, 2010, to 302.90p on June 28).

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Figure 1.

Tate’s 2010 Summer Party Invitation.

Haacke (2010)—as lead signatory of an arts community, including Caryl Churchill (playwright), Suzi Gablik (art critic and writer), Gordon Roddick (arts philanthropist and cofounder of the Body Shop), Lucy Lippard (writer and curator), and Martin Rowson (cartoonist)—used the letters page of the London Guardian on June 28, the same day as Tate’s Summer Party, to protest its relationship with BP:

These relationships enable big oil companies to mask the environmentally destructive nature of their activities with the social legitimacy that is associated with such high-profile cultural associations.

Many artists are angry that Tate and other national cultural institutions continue to sidestep the issue of oil sponsorship. Little more than a decade ago, tobacco companies were seen as respectable partners for public institutions to gain support from—that is no longer the case. It is our hope that oil and gas will be seen in the same light. The public is rapidly coming to recognize that the sponsorship programmes BP and Shell are means by which attention can be distracted from their impacts on human rights, the environment and the global climate (Haacke 2010).

Various collectives of artists against the oil industry sponsorship of the arts, galvanized in response to the Deepwater Horizon, also targeted Tate’s Summer Party. Licence to Spill was launched by Platform and Liberate Tate at the Summer Party: combining art and activism, it was “a symbolic act designed to create maximum disruption to the ‘celebrations’” (Clarke et al. 2011, 87). Licence to Spill addresses, how oil companies use associations with arts institutions to create their social license to operate in other parts of the world. According to Jane Trowell of Platform (2010), “The horrors of the Gulf of Mexico presented everyone concerned with climate change and environmental pollution with a massive opportunity to say something has to stop.” Trowell was commenting in advance of guests arriving to the Summer Party who were greeted by a simulated an oil spill: hundreds of gallons of molasses were spilled at the entrance of Tate Britain. Inside two guests—using the names of successive BP chief executives, “Toni” (Hayward) and “Bobbi” (Dudley)—released another oil spill underneath their dresses. Art Not Oil protested the BP Portrait Award celebration at the National Portrait Gallery, while environmental group Greenpeace mounted an alternative exhibition. Liberate Tate’s installation art work, Crude (2010), saw over thirty members of the collective draw a giant sunflower in the Turbine Hall with black oil paint bursting from BP-branded tubes of paint (September 14, 2010). An accompanying handbill was also distributed (Figure 2). The title is a reference to crude: in the natural or raw state as crude oil; and an unpolished or rude statement, citing Tate’s director, “You don’t abandon your friends because they have a temporary difficulty.” BP is labeled “a climate criminal—pushing our civilisation to the brink of destruction in pursuing profit.” According to Liberate Tate (2012), “BP and Tate should not be friends. It is long past time for the Tate to abandon BP and renounce its complicity in their crimes.”

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Figure 2.

Liberate Tate, Crude (2010).

Sponsorship arrangements are complex and can be contested. The American Marketing Association (2012)—drawing on IEG, a sponsorship consultancy—posits sponsorship as a commercial transaction that is formalized with contractual obligations on both sides: “cash and/or in-kind fee paid to a property”—in this case Tate—“in return for access to the exploitable commercial potential associated with that property.” Wallace Heim, chair of Platform’s board of trustees, addresses the meaning of “exploitable commercial potential” (in Clarke et al. 2011, 87). Heim draws attention to sponsorship as a “catalyzing word” (“it allows profit to change from the excess of money from one activity into the buoyant support for another”) and a “cleansing word” (“it allows the spills, slops, residues of the excess of one activity to become the naturalised, smooth bankrolling of another, maybe less incontinent activity”). Costs and risks are associated with sponsorship arrangements. The Association of Art Museum Directors (2007, 1) indicates “challenges to ensure that the museum’s educational mission is not compromised by external commercial interests.” This is an issue of corporate governance to maintain public trust in arts institutions. A loss of public trust calls into question the viability of arts institution.

Two Brands in Partnership

Both BP and Tate are well-known brands. As brands are considered fictions, branding becomes a form of institutional storytelling (Twitchell 2004). This suggests a narrative with institutions serving as author and protagonist: “The brand is a prefix; the qualifier of character. The symbolic associations of the brand name are often use in preference to the pragmatic description of a useful object” (Pavitt 2000, 16). It is telling that Wally Olins (1994), in Corporate Identity, cites the significance of The Invention of Tradition, edited by Marxist historians Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger (1983). Hobsbawn explained “invented tradition” as “reference to a historic past . . . that is largely fictitious” (Hobsbawn and Ranger 1983, 1). In addition, sociologists Meyer and Rowan (1977) advance a position that institutions are shaped by myth and ceremony. In order to achieve legitimacy with their constituents, institutions are prone to construct stories about their actions that correspond to socially prescribed dictates about what an institution should do. These stories do not necessarily have any connection to what the institutions actually do, but rather, they are used as forms of symbolic reassurance to mollify potentially influential publics.

“Corporations fetishizes creativity and brand themselves around innovation (sometimes using art),” according to Carey Young (in Buchart and Nestler 2010, 3). Young indicates that her artistic practice draws on corporate slogans: “Whilst I don’t think corporations have appropriated artistic types of strategy, I am interested in the corporate use of the languages of creativity, revolution and the avant-garde, whilst the political implications and legacies of these vocabularies have been removed” (in Buchart and Nestler 2010, 3). A particular art museum fiction, namely its “relationship with modern democratic culture,” also exists (Carrier 2006, 15). This means that the art museum continues to be accorded status as a leading civic institution (Cuno 2004; McClellan 2007). Before the formation of art museums, public access to art was limited. Art was often held in private collections—owned by royal families, aristocrats, or the church—and not readily accessible to the general public. The formation of the Louvre, for example, is tied to the French Revolution (1789–99) and the art museum has been has been cited as coinciding with the birth of democracy in France (McClellan 1999; Duncan 1995, 21-47). This founding principle of the art museum as a democratic institution remains a powerful narrative in France—as represented by the contestation of the Louvre Abu Dhabi project—and has influenced thinking in other countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Art museums, as elements of a larger social and cultural world, “work within politically and socially structured limits” (Duncan 1995, 133).

Both institutions, Tate and BP, have commonalities in how their brands have been shaped: time of origin, shifting engagement with British identity, and partnership of two decades. The Tate Gallery at Millbank was formed in 1897 as an offshoot of the National Gallery (established in 1824). The name, Tate, derives from sugar magnate Henry Tate, who was instrumental—as an example of private patronage under the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901)—in establishing the new art institution. A family brand name “Tate” was adopted in 2000 with the opening of Tate Modern at Bankside. The original Millbank site was re-branded as Tate Britain and Tate’s brand also includes Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. BP’s origins date to the early twentieth century as Anglo-Persian Oil (and then Anglo-Iranian Oil in 1935, following a request by the Iranian government that the country be called Iran not Persia). The name, British Petroleum, was adopted in 1954. The 1998 merger between British Petroleum and Amoco created BP Amoco and BP was formally adopted in 2001. The decision represents one of a number of major UK firms dropping the “British” brand as they seek to compete in the global marketplace.

Sir Nicholas Serota, who arrived as Tate’s director in 1988, has been the driving force behind Tate’s emergence as a premier art museum internationally. A starting point for Serota was the “New Displays” exhibition, which was first mounted in 1991 with BP sponsorship (which continues with Tate Britain). “New Displays” was an opportunity for Serota to rehang the permanent collection on an annual basis. In doing so Serota was drawing attention to insufficient exhibition space to accommodate works in the permanent collection. More significantly, Serota was already interpreting the institution’s mission to manage a collection of British art from the sixteenth century to the present day and of international modern and contemporary art—within the original museum building at Millbank—as two distinct collections of art. There was a clear political agenda. Serota (1996) was instrumental in articulating a need for London, within a particular art world moment, to have a modern art museum on par with New York’s Museum of Modern Art or the Centre Pompidou in Paris to help articulate how British art plays a part in the broad history of international art since 1900. London of the 1990s was marked by the emergence and rise of the so-called Young British Artists—led by Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas, as artists, and supported by collectors such as Charles Saatchi and new dealers like Jay Jopling and Sadie Coles—who stole the lead in contemporary art from New York for the first time since 1945. Tate Modern opened in 2000 to critical praise and popular appeal. It served as a marker of the UK’s desire for creative industries to become drivers of economic growth and it helped to cement Serota’s current position as one of the most influential people in the world of contemporary art. The success of Tate Modern since its opening has led to the current capital expansion (with an estimated cost of £215 million at 2012 prices) directed by the original architects Herzog & de Meuron.

Lord Browne of Madingley, BP’s chief executive from 1995 to 2007, was chair of Tate’s board of trustees at the time of BP’s oil spill. Tate’s (2012a) board has a mandate “to determine policy and, together with senior management, set the strategic direction for Tate.” The board also “oversees management of the gallery, with Trustees acting as guardians of the public interest” (Tate 2012a). ¹ Under Browne’s tenure, BP’s (2012a) current identity as “bp”—that is “beyond petroleum”—was launched in order to promote itself as an energy company: “We are at the forefront of delivering diverse, material and real solutions to meet the world’s needs for more secure, cleaner and affordable energy.” The BP (2012a) logo was adopted in 2000:

It is unlike any other energy identity, and symbolizes a number of things—from the living, organic form of a sunflower to the greatest source of energy . . . the sun itself.

The colours of the Helios—named after the Greek god of the sun—suggest heat, light and nature. It is also a pattern of interlocking shapes: like BP, a single entity created by many different parts working as one.

Slogans express the corporate vision for the future: a desire to be associated with innovation and sustainability. Browne’s reign at BP includes a major rebranding exercise: from being British Petroleum, a British-based oil and gas producer, to promoting itself as BP, a socially responsible, global energy provider. As an industry, oil and gas has great economic significance. Carbon-based consumption means that Fortune’s Global 500 ranking of publicly listed firms places five oil and gas firms in the top ten as measured by revenue. At the time of the Deepwater Horizon spill, BP was fourth overall with Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil taking the second and third places, respectively. The FTSE 100—an index of the leading publicly listed firms in the UK—tells a similar story of oil and gas, and BP’s size and stature.

The BP/Tate arts sponsorship arrangement is an “exchange of capital,” according to Haacke (1995, 17), “finance capital on the part of the sponsors and symbolic capital on the part of the sponsored.” This exchange of capital is evident in the manner Browne (in the Guardian, June 30, 2010) discusses what BP derives from its arts sponsorship program: it is “a way for companies to demonstrate they are alive and not just an entity working to extract profit.” At the same time, Tate (2012b) promotes its symbolic capital to corporate sponsors: “increased visibility and enhanced brand awareness,” “exclusive entertaining opportunities and access to leading opinion-formers,” “the opportunity to affiliate your company with world-class innovation and creativity,” and “tailored packages for your CSR agenda.” The finance aspect appears in Tate’s acknowledgement that “corporate contributions are essential to [our] ability to present exhibitions and public programmes.”

Institutions Trust Institutions

“Institutions trust institutions” is a phrase used by Wallis (1986) to accentuate a theme in Haacke’s aesthetic practice, namely an attempt to expose relationships between the largest arts institutions—as institutions of the public sphere—and multinational business enterprises. They “speak the same language; they both understand that an exchange is being offered—promotion for patronage” (Wallis 1986, 53). George Monbiot (2001) has gone further to suggest that corporate power has entered the third stage of conquest, namely that the defeated thank their new masters for their dispossession. Partnerships stroke the egos and enhance the lifestyles of senior corporate managers who view themselves as cultivated men and women. “I think a lot of the time the main motivation [of arts sponsorship] is to give their executives and clients a nice jolly and some privileged access” is a wry observation by Grayson Perry, 2003 winner of the Turner Prize, a contemporary art award established by Tate (in the Guardian, June 30, 2010).

Today Tate is—like the British Museum, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum—a nondepartmental public body (NDPB) funded in part by the UK Department of Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS). As an NDPB, Tate carries out functions on behalf of the DCMS, yet Tate is administered independently. This means that Tate (2012c) “is therefore able to focus entirely on its own objectives and make unbiased recommendations and decisions.” At the same time, the funding agreement between the DCMS and Tate (see Figure 3) can be cited as pressure to address neoliberal and populist cultural policies. The funding agreement represents the entrenchment of performance management, based on auditing principles applied to public services, which has had the effect of displacing first-order experts to second-order verificatory activities monitored by overseers (Power 1994). For example, Tate supplements the grant-in-aid (public subsidy) it receives from the DCMS—approximately 40 percent of its operating budget—with other revenue sources including commercial trading, corporate sponsorship, memberships, and admissions to temporary exhibitions. This means Tate to ensure institutional validity must demonstrate an ability to develop and manage multiple income streams (see Figure 3, point 11 on “self-generated income”), alongside promoting social cohesion and lifelong learning, maximizing contributions to the economy, and delivery services that put consumers first. Yet the operational expense of servicing a diverse audience far outweighs direct income that can reasonably be derived from these audiences. Financial performance has a direct bearing on its success in providing specialized services to a highly diverse audience. In particular, children and young people and those underrepresented based on socioeconomic classification, ethnicity, or disability are identified in the funding agreement as key target groups (see Figure 3 points 4-6 on “audience profile”).

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Figure 3.

Funding agreement between the UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and Tate: performance indicators (or metrics). Source: Tate.

Notions of what is acceptable, as articulated by the funding agreement and plural funding mandates, become important to Tate as the institution is concerned with survival and legitimacy. This pressure from the DCMS to conform to cultural expectations—which also applies to the UK’s other national museums—means that political influence occurs. Sociologists DiMaggio and Powell (1983) use the concept of institutional isomorphism to help answer why institutions within a field are so similar. The process of homogenization represents a quest by institutions to attain legitimacy within their larger environments. Institutional isomorphism focuses on competition for political and institutional legitimacy. Institutions, concerned with their survival and thus their legitimacy, take on forms not necessarily because particular forms are technically appropriate, but rather because they conform to socially acceptable notions of what is appropriate (DiMaggio and Powell 1983).

In the current arts environment, the public may perceive institutions and business corporations as natural allies. One consequence is hostility to interventions by activist artists, as expressed by the chief executive of Arts & Business, Colin Tweedy (in the Guardian, June 30, 2010):

There’s always another needy mouth to feed if the arts don’t want the money. And what happened [at the Tate Party on 28 June] was not helpful. Who’s to say what’s good or bad money?

I don’t think there’s any way we can say that the arts scene has been distorted by corporate money; what distorts the arts scene is not having any money. We have to have private, public and earned income.

The BP/Tate partnership includes complementary marketing communications. On June 24, 2010, Tate and three other elite arts organizations prepared a joint statement defending BP’s arts sponsorship in the United Kingdom:

First, the relatively short joint public relations statement is cited at length:

The British Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Royal Opera House and Tate work with a wide range of companies who support the work of each organisation alongside government subsidy, commercial enterprise and philanthropy. The income generated through corporate partnerships is vital to the mixed economy of successful arts organisations and enables each of us to deliver a rich and vibrant cultural programme.

BP has, for many years, made a very significant contribution to the arts and cultural life of this country including support for the Royal Opera House since 1988, the BP Portrait Award since 1990, Tate since 1990 and the British Museum since 1996.

We are grateful to BP for their long term commitment, sharing the vision that our artistic programmes should be made to the widest possible audience (British Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Royal Opera House, and Tate 2010).

Not surprising, BP’s (2012b) web site promotes its record of collaboration for the public good:

We are committed to arts and culture, supporting several leading UK institutions for three decades.

Our sustained support enables them to plan programmes and secure performers, artists and works of art well into the future. New performances, exhibitions, special events, awards, grants, lectures and access to works of art are made possible by our support.

All of this is part of our broader contribution to society—promoting ideas, inspiring creativity and supporting the social and economic fabric of the UK.

Second, in reply, BP appropriated the prepared joint statement for an advertising campaign, including placement in the Financial Times, at the outset of 2011. Each of the four arts institutions is individually named and picture framed. This dominates the upper two-thirds of the full-page advertisement. Immediately below is a striking pronouncement—“Four national treasures. One long history.”—that is developed in a longer testament, one replicating the sentiment of the public relations statement, “BP’s support for the arts and culture goes back more than 30 years and includes long-term partnerships with the British Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Royal Opera House and Tate Britain.” At the bottom right, BP adds its current status as “premier partner of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad”; this is situated between the BP logo and the 2012 London Olympics logo.

A Continuing Story (First Anniversary and After)

The first anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster provided an opportunity for reflection. Naomi Klein (2000, 2011)—best known for No Logo, which helped to propel her as a figurehead for activist movements interrogating the symbolic order of contemporary capitalism—was lead signatory to a letter, published in the Guardian (April 20, 2011). It served as a companion to the one by Haacke and others that Tate should end its relationship with BP:

While BP continues to jeopardise ecosystems communities and the climate by the reckless pursuit of “frontier” oil, cultural institutions like Tate damage their reputation by continuing to be associated with such a destructive corporation.

The massive cuts to public arts funding in the UK have left hundreds of culturally important arts organizations in a position of great financial vulnerability, which means that that debate about the appropriateness of particular potential corporate sponsors like BP and Shell is more relevant than ever. As people working in the arts, we believe that corporate sponsorship does not exist in an ethical vacuum. In light of BP around the world, we urge Tate to demonstrate its commitment to a sustainable future by ending its sponsorship relationship with BP.

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Figure 4.

Art Not Oil, Liberate Tate and Platform, Not if but when Culture Beyond Oil (2011).

On the other hand, Bob Dudley (2011), BP’s chief executive following the resignation of Tony Hayward at the end of September 2010, used an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (April 20, 2011) to highlight the continuing significance of a carbon-based economy:

Looking ahead, it is important to keep in mind that the global demand for energy will raise inexorably in coming decades—nearly 40% by 2030, according to BP estimates. That’s roughly twice the current energy consumption of the entire US. Even as energy companies develop alternatives, the world will still need a large volume of oil.

Is Big Oil too big to be excluded by the arts? Is there an ethical stasis when it comes to the issue of oil and gas and the wider arts sector? Possibly, yes, at present. In December 2011, Tate announced that it had renewed its sponsorship deal with BP. Indeed it was part of a sponsorship arrangement of £10 million over five years, by BP to the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Opera House and Tate. Critics claim that the entrenchment of BP in the UK’s leading arts institutions—for a rather paltry sum—means they are helping BP to clean up its tarnished image.

Concluding Remarks

By way of summation, “institutions trust institutions”—the title of this article—recognizes a convergence of interests between business and the arts. Neoliberal cultural policies have, as part of plural arts funding or a mixed arts economy advanced by successive governments in the United Kingdom since Thatcher, encouraged closer ties between business corporations and arts institutions. Studying the corporate sponsorship relationship between BP and Tate, with particular reference to the direct action of activist artists following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, presents an opportunity to reevaluate the ethics of arts sponsorship by multinational capitalism, a contemporary issue of marketing and society. Both BP and Tate have constructed stories to justify their actions. Under Browne BP fashioned itself as a socially responsible, global energy provider; whereas Tate seeks to compete against the leading museums of modern art in New York and Paris while retaining ties to democratic ideals associated with being a leading civic institution. However, artists—including Hans Haacke and UK-based collectives of activist artists, namely Platform, Art Not Oil, and Liberate Tate (as part of institutional critique)—have inserted a tension between BP and Tate. Tate’s 2010 Summer Party to celebrate BP’s role as a corporate sponsor afforded an opportunity for activist art campaigns to challenge the management of both BP’s and Tate’s reputations.

Activist art campaigns enable competing claims to enter the public domain. It “helps to speed up the process of getting Big Oil kicked out of High Culture,” according to Art Not Oil (2012) who add that “sponsored institutions [like Tate should] should adopt climate (justice)-related sponsorship criteria.” Multiple perspectives on social issues—such as relationships between business and the arts—are useful in a democratic society. This study contributes in several ways. Attention is devoted to the “substantive domain” advocated by Wilkie and Moore (2012) of real-world phenomena and problems. Investigating the BP/Tate partnership via critiques by artists is part of Dholakia’s (2012) “critical–radical” research space. Institutional critique represents a fusion of what Hirschman (1983) labels aesthetic and ideological. A macro perspective mitigates the weaknesses associated with a firm orientation (i.e., what makes the institution run) that fails to address external appraisal and limits how major societal and public policy issues are voiced. Social and public policy issues are raised including climate control, carbon-based consumption and government policy on arts funding in the United Kingdom.

“Critiques by artists of the BP/Tate partnership” is part of the contribution artists make to marketing and society. Their efforts are advanced through institutional critique, an expression for change aligned with aesthetics and social justice concerns. Artists offer possibilities for collective and public resistance including, as presented in this study, a reframing of the notion of critique. BP/Tate’s relationship, particularly following the Deepwater Horizon disaster, has served as a catalyst for activist performance art at the vanguard of mounting pressure to situate oil and gas producers alongside tobacco manufacturers as inappropriate corporate sponsors of the arts. It seems legitimate that the art museum as a public space—in this case Tate—can be appropriated by activist communities to work out the values—resistance to the BP/Tate relationship—that identify them as communities (Duncan 1995).

Yet the practitioners of institutional critique face hurdles, as noted by Carey Young (in Godfrey 2008): “But when did an artist stop anything to do with mainstream capitalism?” Pragmatists, as exemplified by the advocacy organization Arts & Business, cite the mixed arts economy to indicate how the private sector has become integral to the funding of arts organizations in the United Kingdom. The joint statement by Tate and other leading arts organization to defend BP’s sponsorship record, in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, provided BP with a theme and content to mount an advertising campaign. The rise and rise of managerialism has encouraged the privatization and commercialization of the public domain. If it is challenging for Tate to discontinue its partnership relationship with BP, activist artists play a vital role in offering an alternative perspective on a social issue in a democratic society.