Campaigners say celebrities quit British Museum event after climate and pro-Palestine pressure

Campaigners have hailed the apparent withdrawal of several celebrities from a committee helming a fundraising ball for the British Museum, crediting scrutiny over its ties to British Petroleum (BP) and the involvement of companies linked to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The British Museum denied that the pullouts were connected to the campaign or criticism of the museum and event.

A coalition of pro-Palestine and climate justice groups, including Energy Embargo for Palestine (EEFP) and Culture Unstained, wrote to members of the committee calling for them to withdraw, citing the British Museum’s long-running partnership with BP.

They said the company is “complicit in and profiting from the ongoing genocide in Gaza and climate breakdown”.

In a post on Instagram on Wednesday, EEFP reported that actor Idris Elba, fashion designer Bella Freud and author Zadie Smith had been removed from the list of committee members for the event. 

The British Museum told MEE: “Membership of the committee is voluntary and reflects those who are attending on the night or are continuing to actively support the event in other ways - for example through its production or guest list,” they said.

The museum has touted its inaugural “Pink Ball” as a “new highlight on the international social calendar” set to rival New York’s Met Gala. 

It vowed that the event would “shine a spotlight on London as a global centre of creativity and culture”, bringing together “the world’s leading creatives, collectors, and cultural visionaries”.

The museum said the pink theme is intended to celebrate “colours and light of India” - it being the predominant colour of its "Ancient India: Living Traditions" exhibition.

“Of course the theme is pink!” museum director Nicholas Cullinan said, adding that celebrity attendees, which include Naomi Campbell, Miuccia Prada and Alexa Chung, will walk a “pink carpet”.

'Nick Cullinan has been only too willing to offer the museum up as a platform for those perpetrating - and profiting from - the genocide'

- Culture Unstained

“If you are paying £2,000 to attend a pink-themed ball at the British Museum, you want to walk in on a pink carpet,” he said.

The star-studded committee list includes Bianca Jagger, Anoushka Shankar and Alexa Chung, with tickets for a table of 10 going for £20,000. 

EEFP told MEE that the event “represents the moral vacuum at the heart of how the British Museum is run”, noting the museum’s signing of a £50m sponsorship deal with BP in 2023. 

BP is currently facing legal action brought by Palestinians in Gaza for running the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline that provides Israel with 28 percent of its crude oil supply.

MEE asked several members of the committee, including Jagger, who recently attended a protest against the UK government’s proscription of direct action group Palestine Action, if they still planned to participate in the event, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

‘A ballroom to do business’

Campaigners also pointed to the involvement of the Ambani family, Indian billionaires who own gas and oil giant Reliance Industries Limited and firms with links to the Israeli military.

The family are sponsoring the event, while Isha Ambani, the daughter of Mukesh Ambani, the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, is co-chairing the organising committee.

One of the family's firms, Reliance Jio, has helped develop Israel’s digital infrastructure, while another, Reliance Defence, worked with Rafael Advanced Defence Systems to build missile systems and drones for the Israeli military, according to a recent report. 

EEFP claimed the Ambani family are “also responsible for financing and technologically arming the rise of the Modi regime in India”, referring to allegations that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi accepted “truckloads” of illegal funds from Mukesh Ambani and billionaire Gautam Adani during his 2024 election campaign.

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Also on the committee is Carole Bamford, director of British company JCB, which has supplied Israel with equipment used to demolish Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank, as well as providing armoured, unbranded High Mobility Engineer Excavators to the Israeli military.

Mukti Shah from the Stop JCB Bulldozer Genocide Campaign noted that the company’s bulldozers have also been used by Modi’s government in unlawful demolitions of Muslim homes and businesses in India.

A spokesperson for Culture Unstained - a campaign and research group that aims to end fossil fuel sponsorship of culture in the UK - said the event’s guest list reflects a long history of the museum allying itself with “those causing and contributing to loss of life and the destruction of heritage in the very communities and cultures represented in its collection”.

“From the Israeli embassy to its sponsor BP, Nick Cullinan has been only too willing to offer the museum up as a platform for those perpetrating - and profiting from - the genocide in Palestine to do business,” the spokesperson said.

He noted that the event flies in the face of a revised code of ethics adopted by the Museums Association, which stipulates that museums should now transition away from fossil fuels and ditch sponsors guilty of perpetrating human rights abuses.

“However, with the Pink Ball, it's the turn of the billionaire Ambani family to use the museum as a platform,” he said.

“The British Museum was founded to promote the understanding of ancient and living cultures from around the world, not to become a ballroom where polluting corporations and rights-abusing governments can do business.”

‘Deeply tasteless’

The ball has also reignited simmering anger among the museum’s staff over an event it held for the Israeli embassy in May, when Israel was laying waste to Gaza.

Staff previously told MEE that they were kept in the dark about the event, saying they received “absolute non-responses” from management to multiple letters demanding an apology.

A staff member reported that there was an “overwhelmingly widespread feeling of disgust and betrayal” among workers across all sectors of the museum.

Those feelings have resurfaced over management’s handling of Saturday’s ball, with staff reporting their input and concerns have been “repeatedly ignored or minimised in the rush to make the event happen”.

Staff have also raised concerns about the risk posed by the event to the museum’s artefacts.

A champagne bar will be installed in the Round Reading Room, while the dinner tables will be arranged amongst the Parthenon Marbles.

Also known as the Elgin marbles, the 2,000-year-old sculptures adorned the Parthenon in Athens and were controversially stripped in 1805 by Lord Elgin, a British diplomat. 

Greece has long demanded that the marbles be permanently returned.

“The sculptures are made of an incredibly porous marble. It will take one drunken party goer to slip with their glass of wine and spill something on them, and it will cause irreparable damage,” staff member Isabel told MEE.

“Fundamentally, it just undermines our credibility as stewards of the collection.”

'Fundamentally, it just undermines our credibility as stewards of the collection'

- Isabel, staff member

But the staff’s concerns fell on deaf ears in the frenzy to pull off the event in time.

“A lot of my colleagues who work in collections, care and in curating have been fighting an uphill battle to accommodate the concerns they have about the safety of the objects with this kind of event happening around them,” Isabel said.

She also said that staff had misgivings about the museum staging the event around culturally sensitive objects subject to restitution disputes.

“It trivialises the very valid concerns of lots of cultural groups who already feel like they're not acknowledged by the museum, and it reduces these priceless, sensitive cultural objects to party decor for the uber wealthy,” she said.

“It's a deeply, deeply tasteless thing to do.”

The British Museum spokesperson told MEE: “There are no concerns around the hosting of an event of this type, and the museum regularly hosts events in the gallery spaces without issue.” They added that it is “standard across the entire sector to host corporate, private, and commercial events in museum spaces”.

“It is unfair to state the museum doesn’t acknowledge cultural groups whose material sits within the collection,” the spokesperson continued, saying that the British Museum “actively works with groups around the world on a number of projects, and the curatorial departments regularly welcome source communities to Bloomsbury to collaborate and engage”.