Check out the Rebrand BP competition entries on Flickr
What lies behind BP's very public sponsorship of the arts, I wonder? Is it a selfless desire to spread a little cultural enlightenment down into the ranks of the great British public? Or could it be simply a cynical mechanism to distract attention from the company's terrible record on environment, climate change, and human rights issues?
Last Monday Tate Britain's summer party to celebrate 20 years of BP sponsorship- the wisdom of which was the subject of an interesting debate on that morning's Today programme between former Arts Council boss Sir Christopher Frayling and our very own Charlie Kronick.
Later in the day the event itself was disrupted by protestors smearing oil-like goo at the gallery's entrance, demanding that it cut its ties with the disgraced oil giant following the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
The protest drew a lot of support from across the artistic community which, in turn, led to predictable outrage among the usual press suspects, who branded them "hypocritical luvvies", "luddites" and "eco-fascists" amongst other things as they leaped to BP's defence.
Had they stopped to think for a moment they might have reflected that silence was probably a better option at this point than defending the indefensible; BP's own hypocrisy in rebranding itself 'beyond petroleum' while stepping up its investments in high-risk deep water drilling and tar sands has been well documented and exposed in recent months, as has CEO Tony Hayward's insistence on a return to "maximising shareholder value" at all costs.
And just why does the Tate think it appropriate to honor its sponsor BP at a time the company's venal incompetence has resulted in lives lost, livelihoods ruined and the environmental degradation of a uniquely important and vulnerable stretch of the the Gulf coast?
Tate should no longer support BP in its attempt to promote a positive public image which is totally at variance with its real-world behaviour. At the moment everything this company touches is toxic, and if the Tate and other arts institutions want to protect their own reputations, they'll be making rapid plans to extricate themselves from any further involvement with it.
