Hieroglyphs protest at British Museum by ‘BP or not BP?’
From our friends at Real Media: https://realmedia.press/bp-or-not-bp-hieroglyphs/
Performance protest group BP or not BP? staged a ‘sing-in’ at the British Museum on Sunday (11th Dec), calling for the Museum Director not to enter into a new sponsorship deal with BP when the current one runs out in February.
The Hieroglyphs: Unlocking Ancient Egypt exhibition is the last to be sponsored by the fossil-fuel company in the current deal, but documents uncovered by Culture Unstained reveal a meeting in September in which director Hartwig Fischer discussed “the different options for BP’s support post-Spring 2023”.
If the museum decides to continue a funding arrangement with BP, it will be swimming against the tide of many cultural institutions which have been cutting fossil-fuel ties.
BP’s presence in Egypt includes recent new exploration licences on top of its current daily near 1 billion cubic feet gas extraction from the West Nile Delta fields.
Egypt is accused of severe political repression, with an estimated 60,000 prisoners, including Alaa Abd El-Fattah whose crime was to expose the torture of prisoners there, but earlier this year BP CEO Bernard Looney praised President Sisi’s “wise leadership and ambitious vision”.
The centrepiece of the current Hieroglyphs exhibition is The Rosetta Stone. Ironically, the stone bears the engraving “It should be in the hands of those who live in the country”, and this phrase was repeated as part of the performance on Sunday, as activists reminded the museum directors and the public that stolen art, the choice not to extract, the right to fight for rights, and the right to freedom and equality should ALL be in the hands of those who live in the country.
