British Museum Announces BP-Funded Refurbishment

The British Museum earlier today revealed plans for a massive restoration and the redisplay of its permanent collection. Expected to take decades, the refurbishment will be funded in part by oil and gas conglomerate BP, which has contributed £50 million ($63.7 million) toward the effort. The contribution is one of the largest corporate donations ever made to a UK museum, and the largest to date received by the British Museum, beating out the £20 million given by the Garfield Weston Foundation in 2000, which went toward the construction of the institution’s central Great Court. When finished, the renovation and redisplay are expected to cost roughly £1 billion.RelatedRICHARD HUNT (1935–2023)MET TO RETURN LOOTED TREASURES TO CAMBODIA, THAILAND The museum will launch an architectural competition next spring to determine which firm will oversee the initial phase of the project, which involves a redesign of the so-called Western Range galleries.

Devoted to ancient Greek, Egyptian, and Roman art, the galleries comprise about a third of the museum’s display space and house, among other treasures, the Rosetta Stone and thehotly contestedParthenon marbles, the repatriation of which Greece is doggedly pursuing. Future phases include a new energy center, which aims to replace fossil fuels with low-carbon technologies. Partly funded by the government, the center is meant to reduce the museum’s carbon footprint. The announcement comes as the museum struggles to piece together its shattered international reputation in the wake of a string of thefts, thought to have been perpetrated by aveteran curator, that saw some 2,000 antiquities leave the institution’s hallowed halls only to be sold at bargain-basement prices on eBay.

That incident has already led to the departure of museum directorHartwig Fischerand, more recently, deputy directorJonathan Williams. In accepting BP’s gift, the British Museum appears to reverse course on its seemingpassive dropthis past summer of the fossil fuel behemoth as a sponsor after beingpressuredfor years by climate change activists to do so.Newsof the donation has already raised the hackles of environmental watchdog Greenpeace, which in a statement cast the agreement between the two parties as “what must surely be one of the biggest, most brazen greenwashing sponsorship deals the [arts and culture] sector has ever seen.”.