The British Museum (BM) has bought 2,420 Japanese artefacts with tobacco company funding. This support is credited to JTI, the innocuous initials of Japan Tobacco International. Its cigarette brand names include Benson & Hedges, Winston, Camel and Silk Cut.
Despite the recent Sackler controversy—when virtually all arts organisations broke their links with the family behind Purdue Pharma, makers of OxyContin, which has been at the heart of the US’s prescription-opioid overdose crisis—a few museums are still accepting tobacco money. Smoking kills nearly 100,000 a people a year in the UK.
Among the first UK museums to break with members of the Sackler family was the National Portrait Gallery, in 2019. The gallery was then headed by Nicholas Cullinan, who took over as the BM director in June. It will be interesting to see how he now handles tobacco sponsorship.
What the money buys
When The Art Newspaper checked the BM’s website five years ago, the JTI Acquisition Fund was the donor of 600 objects. Last month the figure had quadrupled to 2,420. The latest acquisitions include a copy of the 1787 Picture-book of Warrior’s Sandals—not a major item, but nevertheless a welcome addition to the BM’s Japanese collection. JTI also funds a curatorial project post for Japanese material, currently held by Alfred Haft.
Along with its support for the Japanese department, JTI supports the BM’s Community Partnership Programme, which includes touch-tours for blind and partially-sighted visitors, sign-language tours, LGBTQ tours and tea parties for older and isolated individuals.
Last month a BM spokesperson said: “In times of reduced public funding, corporate sponsorship is vital to us fulfilling our mission to expand access to the collection. JTI is a longstanding corporate partner and we are grateful to them for their support, which has enabled the museum to significantly increase accessibility and engagement with the collection for under-represented adults.”
The other leading UK visual art institution which still accepts tobacco money is London’s Royal Academy of Arts (RA). JTI is a “premier” corporate supporter. Of the 14 companies providing this level of support, JTI is the only one named on the RA website which lacks a link to its relevant corporate site, making it more difficult for outsiders to identify it as Japan Tobacco International.
