• THE praiseworthy demonstrators at the British Museum seemed brave enough to defy an institution that, under its pretence of respectability, has no shame about the fact it contains loot and pillage from across the world.

Meanwhile BP has insanely committed itself to climate change and pollution that will wreck the planet.

Art, let’s face it, has always had a dubious relationship with big money.

Michelangelo, albeit with a simmering defiance, had to work for two manipulative Medici popes whom he loathed.

Leo X and Clement VII simply used his art as propaganda for the Holy See but he appears to have done all he could to be independent, to work for a free Florentine republic, and to produce statues and frescos in terms of a personal statement about his sexuality.

Today’s artists, on the whole, are just truckles before corporate cash. Only photographer Nan Goldin in New York protested against the opioid menace of the Sacklers, who have tried to monopolise the London art scene.

Artists here have said and done little about poisoned Sackler sponsorship.

I would ask people to boycott museums. I myself, during lockdown, have resorted to a constantly difficult street art in Soho as my own protest in the wake of BP and the Sacklers.

The point is, pompous, stuck-up London museums are a lot, lot less “ethical” than red-light Soho, don’t you know, darlings?

ZEKRIA IBRAHIMI
Mackenzie Close, W12