Crude gestures
BP’s travails across the ever murkier water are visiting them this side too, in their guise as art sponsors. It’s proving to be something of a toxic brand here too, with the National Portrait Gallery bracing itself for protesting environmentalists block the entrance to the BP Portrait Award which opened yesterday. And it’s not as if the NPG hasn’t got enough controversy to cope with – the winner of BP’s £25,000 first prize this time is Daphne Todd with her portrait of the corpse of her dead mother. But the NLG isn’t the only gallery likely to fine association wth BP awkward. It hasn’t passed the notice of activists that the chairman of the Tate is now Lord Brown, BP’s colourful former boss, and the pickets are expected ot be out on Monday when the Tate celebrates its 20 years of sponsorship by BP. The activists, perhaps taking cue from the Tate’s current show Rude Britannia, have dubbed themselves “Good Crude Britannia’, and the Tate and NPG aren’t the only arts institutions that have benefited from BP’s largesse, reckoned to be well over a £1m a year. The British Museum and the Royal Opera House have too, and together they have drawn a deep breath and issued a statement: ‘The income generated through corporate partnerships is vital to the mixed economy of successful arts organisations and enables each of us to deliver a rich and vibrant cultural programme. We are grateful to BP for their long-term commitment, sharing the vision that our artistic programmes should be made available to the widest possible audience.’

Bird flies
Meanwhile, the Tate is losing its well respected chief operating officer. Three years after joining the taste Julian Bird is to succeed Richard Pulford as ceo of the Society of London Theatre and the Theatre Management Association, starting in November.

£1m lift for Bishop’s organ
A minor triumph for the quiet man of arts management, successor as SBC’s ceo to the less reserved Michael Lynch last year. In his recent profile in Classical Music magazine Alan Bishop had this to say: ‘It’s funny how, when a newcomer arrives, certain things stand out, and this was on for me. It was a shame that time and money ran out before it could be done, but I am I determined that by 2013 we will have a magnificent fully working organ, my one particular passion. It’ going to cost over £2m o, but it has to happen’. Well, the Heritage Lottery Fund habve juist handed him nearly half of it, £950,000.
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