On Saturday, a few days after the highly anticipated Bayeux Tapestry exhibition opened at the British Museum, the group Energy Embargo for Palestine staged a protest in the museum’s Great Hall. The protest was related to the museum’s long-running relationship with British Petroleum and its collaboration with Igor Tulchinsky.
Last week, Middle East Eye revealed that the Belarusian billionaire spent $6.8 million to support the artwork’s journey from France to London. Tulchinsky also funded a yurt in a community center in Efrat, an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank that is now under UK sanctions.
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In addition to the British Museum severing its ties to BP and renaming its BP Lecture Theater, Energy Embargo for Palestine wants the museum to end all funding related to fossil fuel and BDS-listed companies and to empower staff via an ethics committee in order to make decisions related to partnerships and events.
The action on September 10 involved the unfurling of what the group is calling “the people’s tapestry,” made in collaboration with A Space for Us Now and Camden Friends of Palestine. The work includes stitched-together images made by community members with messages like “stop fueling genocide” and “welfare not warfare.”
“The interests of the British Museum management are in stark opposition to its workers, people across the culture sector, people in Camden and to the general public,” Energy Embargo for Palestine wrote on Instagram, noting that the museum is the only prominent institution in London that has yet to sever ties with BP.
