SALİM KADIBEŞEGİL

This article was published in the Spring 2020 issue of the TEID Ethics and Reputation Society’s quarterly magazine, IN. 

First, let’s take a look at a story that has been circulating continuously in newspapers and the virtual media in recent months:

“Activists oppose oil giant British Petroleum’s attempt to ‘use art to clean its image’ by appearing to support institutions of culture such as Tate Modern and the British Museum. A new protest to prevent these institutions from making new agreements with BP was made at the British Museum on September 13. Protesters from 15 different groups gathered on the museum’s central courtyard on Sunday, demanding that the museum does not renew its current sponsorship. Dressed in black, the protestors assembled to form the word ‘NO’ and opened the umbrellas in their hands.”

There are some museums in the world, each of which is a priceless brand! They walk millions of visitors every across the pages of history. They weave the works of art that line their walls and their artists into an unforgettable collective narrative. You see artists—who otherwise would never gather around the same wine table, and who are otherwise likely to drown one another out with a teaspoon full of water if they meet— side by side in corridors adorned with great arts.

The Louvre, the National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of China, the National Air and Space Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art MOMA, TATE, the Vatican, the British Museum, the State Hermitage, Victoria & Albert Museum, Musee d’Orsay, Topkapi Palace, and the Mevlana Museum, of course… Each host over one million visitors per year. Visitors to the Louvre never drop below ten million.

Museums are a meeting point. They are centres where not only the artists of the works exhibited there, but also the visitors who experience these works express their emotions. From the outside, spending hours under the roof of a stone building might not seem overly meaningful. On the other hand, attempts to get an entry ticket to the Uffizi in Florence a few months ago lead to the starting point of a journey. Buying a plane ticket to Madrid to see the new collection at Prado doesn’t count as visiting Spain.

After all, museums are living centres. Beyond bearing witness to history, they also bear the mission of carrying history into the centuries to come.

People’s keen interest in museums naturally leads to the emergence of those in the business world whose appetites “reputation has whetted”, or to those who “wish to suppress their hunger” in order to “hunt for reputation”. For companies, being on the hunt for reputation is in the form of gaining “a share in art” in their visibility by providing considerable financial support to some museums with high attraction.

Take the British Museum protests for example. Activists opposed to BP’s attempt to “steal a piece” of the Museum’s reputation and see BP as one of the chief culprits behind climate change and global warming—a reality that waiting for us at our front door.

In the words of one protester who hit the nail on the head:

Companies Buy Social Acceptability!

“It is very important to be aware that the money BP doles out is neither for donation nor for charity. Rather, it is part of their marketing strategies and budget. They buy ‘social acceptability’ in return for being allowed to continue what they do”.

In 1988, Jeff Hansen, a former NASA scientist who spoke before US Congress to warn Americans of what climate change and global warming have in store for us with scientific explanations, is critical of the fact that energy companies—which he views as being the chief culprit behind both—are among the main sponsors of the Science Museum in London. Hansen was also among those arrested in front of the White House in 2010 because he had joined activists to protest climate change.

The Science Museum in London is no ordinary place. Not only is it one of the pioneers of experiential museology, it moreover draws in millions of visitors per year. Among its sponsors include BP, Shell and Equinor. Documentary filmmaker Nick Packham—like Jeff Hansen—is one of many key figures who opposed to this collaboration. Both point out that sponsorship agreements pose ethical issue for the Museum, and demand they terminate this cooperation “immediately”.

What’s ironic is that global warming and climate change—which we are breathing down our necks—also negatively impact museums. The places where priceless and irreplaceable works of art are exhibited are negatively affected by uncontrolled fires, natural disasters, water shortages, and pandemics, just to name a few. Worse still, these institutions can make sponsorship agreements—for financial support—with companies that are at the helm of all of those negativities!

ExxonMobil (the single source of 3% of world’s carbon emissions since 1965), for instance, is one of the world’s most generous “philanthropists”. It has invested more than $2 million in the arts in the United States alone.

Does that money that companies deposit into museum bank accounts to contribute to their reputation, in fact, “harm their reputation”?

It’s easy for us to say that the problem lies right where social sensitivity turns into protests targeting museum administrations. The TATE museum in London, for example, announced that it—spurred on by the protests—had ended its 26 years of cooperation with BP in 2017. Likewise, the Van Gogh Museum had announced that it had terminated its agreement with Shell in 2018. Similarly, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery announced in November 2019 that it would no longer get involved in any exhibition supported by BP.

Art wash

Activists use the term “art wash” to refer to companies responsible for global warming who pretend to support the arts—and particularly museums—“as if they themselves were members of the art world”.

They accentuate that such a PR strategy has no “sincerity” whatsoever.

In fact, news traffic focusing on trans-border issues such as global warming and climate change unavoidably cites those companies that are at the heart of the issue. As such, those who try and impose their corporate brands to society “through art” and are after “gaining appreciation” are in fact the debtors, not creditors of the reputation market! The reason being is that sponsorship initiatives trigger reactions from groups, whose sense of social sensitivity is high, because they write news that cater to society’s emotional chord as opposed to actually support the arts. Long story short, the PR strategy isn’t working!

Shouldn’t museums be sponsored? Would they be able to survive off of visitor revenue alone—that, in a world that orbits around high budgets and fierce competition?

Museums no doubt need sponsors—however, not every kind!

What it all boils down to are social sensitivity and values. For a museum slap the logo of a company that “has done so much wrong” towards ethical and fair management, human rights, transparency, responsibility and accountability puts their own “reputation at grave risk”. Hence, we must make a distinction between those who hide behind art and those who actually support art.

“They’ve sent their sponsors into Coventry”

The global financial crisis of 2008 brought us similar headlines. For example, according to Forbes magazine, the Sackler family was found to have more than $14 billion in assets at the time they were sentenced to pay $12 billion “for now” in compensation for the lawsuits made against Purdue/OxyContin—the drug allegedly killed hundreds of thousands of people— and it ended up going bankrupt. Alas, this same family had lent their surname to support countless universities, museums, and art galleries—not the least of which include MOMA, TATE, and the Guggenheim as the leading players of the world museology league. Many have already announced to the public that they’ve severed their tries with the family, while others plan how to end their relations with this family.

CEO Allen Stanford, who had been sentenced to 110 years in prison for financial fraud, was a frequently heard name in the art and museum word. He managed to defraud more than $7 billion out of some 20,000 investors. He had opened museums and even created art awards in his own name. In short, he used history, arts and museums to earn himself his reputation, discovering that both were one of the easiest channels through which to launder money.

Perhaps Stanford’s story pales in comparison to that of Bernie Madoff, another wizard of the Ponzi scheme. Madoff was sentenced to 158 years in prison for wiping thousands of investors clean of over $50 billion—he too had been unmasked following the crisis of 2008. More importantly, his “philanthropic” investments in dozens of museums, art galleries, educational institutions, and health care organizations disappeared with Madoff all together. Would they’ve been able to keep Madoff’s financial contribution in their safes, perhaps they’d be able to move on, yet, Bernie had tricked them—and he was going to run off with the money he was to give! He really bought “reputation”. He took on a new identity as a model “philanthropist”, spending the better half of his time setting up new rings in his Ponzi scheme! (In the meantime, lest we forget that that such investments are tax-free in the United States)

“What can the business world learn from museums?”

Let’s flip over the sheet of paper we happen to be scribbling on. Are there any lessons the business world can learn from the reputation of museums? If they put those lessons into practice, can they truly contribute to society?

Co-founder of the Reputation Institute and professor at Erasmus University’s Rotterdam School of Business, Cees van Riel is of the belief that this is very much possible. One study by them, where 12,000 people were interviewed, they found that the Louvre, the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum are the world’s most reputable museums. In the research covering interviews with 12,000 people from 18 museums in 10 countries on 4 continents, Cees van Riel states that museums question their own reputations.

Van Riel’s study report underlines that companies contribute to society through projects, and that there are things they can learn from museums in order to bolster both their reputation as well as their social output.

Cees van Riel stresses the following: “Embedded within the DNA of museums is social mission—hence why they manage their financial resources in museums as prudently as possible. Therefore, they hold a high reputation within society”.

Van Riel also discovered in his research that “society rewards museums whose reputation surpasses highly reputable companies. Therefore, it would be useful for companies to look to how highly reputable museums are managed if they want to raise their own reputation.”

Andy Warhol once asked, “Making money is art. However, is it also art to make money from art?” When we look companies that have been barred from sponsoring museums, we see that they see such investments as “business”. Perhaps they view investing in art as being no different than supplying raw materials. In this case, they might want to consider “masterfully transforming business into art” as better than nothing, but I have no idea what they would do if they were to see their logo hanging above a museum door!