BP is the sponsor of The British Museum’s ‘Michelangelo Drawings’ Exhibition, but what lies beneath the logo?

* 15 workers were killed and over 170 injured in an explosion at bp’s texas city refinery on march 23rd 2005. (Please remember the 15 today on the 1st anniversary of their deaths)

* ‘Oil gushes into Arctic ocean from bp pipeline’, IND 21.3.06

* ‘BP and Shell have discussed with the government the prospect of claiming a stake in Iraq's oil reserves in the aftermath of war.’ Financial Times, 11.3.03

* BP has bankrolled Colombian paramilitary death squads in exchange for the ‘protection’ of its oilfields

* fossil fuel-induced climate chaos (or ‘global warming’) hit Europe in August 2003, killing tens of thousands of mostly older people in record-breaking temperatures

* ‘Exposed: BP, its pipeline, and an environmental timebomb’ Independent on BP’s Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil & gas pipelines, 26.6.04, which will be a human rights disaster & produce over 150M tonnes of CO2 each year for 40 years, causing untold damage to the world’s climate. (baku.org.uk)

* BP invests less than 3% of its annual budget on solar & other renewable energy sources, much less than it ploughs into advertising and public relations BP’s oil & gas operations throughout the world, eg. in Colombia (colombiasolidarity.org.uk/), West Papua (jatam.org), Russia, Angola, Alaska (time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1174706,00.html), and even here in the UK, continue to cause destitution and ecological devastation, as do all> oil companies.

But don’t be depressed - it’s still not too late to DO SOMETHING about all this injustice and climatic meltdown. How about…don’t fly/challenge corporations and those that let them peddle the illusion of their greenness/get a bike/send art to Art Not Oil/grow your own food/cut your emissions/ spread hope/start building a fossil fuel-free future NOW!

And on the issue of sponsorship, how about telling BM boss Neil MacGregor what you think:
 directorate@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk

Info: www.artnotoil.org.uk &
www.londonrisingtide.org.uk
e:  london@risingtide.org.uk
c/o 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES

First off, this is what the poster for the British Museum's 'Michelangelo Drawings - Closer to the Master' exhibition became after it had spent a few hurried moments in the hands of the Greenwash Guerillas' (very) ad hoc design department.

Then there are two shots from within the gates of the British Museum, where we managed to pose briefy before the nice security men started to lose their patience...