In the Arts: Major U.K. Cultural Institutions Renew BP Ties

Four of Britain’s leading arts organizations announced they will renew sponsorship deals worth $15.5-million with energy producer BP, writes The Guardian.

The energy company said the five-year funding would be roughly split among the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Opera House, and the Tate Britain.

Environmental activists have long called on the arts groups to eschew BP funding, and the protests intensified after last year’s catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“The [Tate’s] board has thought very carefully about this and decided it was the right thing to do to continue with BP, who have been great supporters of the arts,” said Nicholas Serota, the museum’s director. “The fact that they have one major incident in 2010 does not mean we should not take support from them.”

In other arts news:

• Broadway’s nonprofit theater companies are increasingly resembling their commercial peers as they seek big-ticket hits as a hedge against financial instability, says The New York Times.

With the lingering downturn making donation and subscription revenue unpredictable, the Manhattan Theater Club, Lincoln Center Theater, and Roundabout Theater Company are teaming with commercial producers and undertaking national tours to boost their bottom lines.

“We’re still feeling the aftereffects from the 2008 economic downturn, so we’re looking for ways to generate revenue to support the theater company,” said Barry Grove, executive producer for the Manhattan Theater Club, which is moving its surprise hit “Venus in Fur” to a for-profit house. “Here you have a risky new play that became a hit, and we’re trying to maximize that to benefit the artists as well as MTC.”

• A Hong Kong financier who helped build the University of California’s Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive has donated $15-million toward construction of the museum’s new home, writes the Contra Costa Times.

David Woo worked for the firm that constructed the University of California museum in the late 1960s. A $1-million slice of the gift will endow a faculty chair at the Berkeley campus’s College of Environmental Design, from which the donor graduated in 1967.

Mr. Woo heads Hong Kong-based Woo Hon Fai Holdings.