Museum’s Woodside funding safe despite activist acquisition

WA Deputy Premier Rita Saffioti said the decision to accept the vandalised perspex into the museum’s collection was not one she would have made.

Disrupt Burrup Hub campaigner Joana Partyka with the sheet of perspex spray painted with the Woodside logo that has been acquired by the WA Museum.

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Woodside Energy is set to continue with its funding for the Western Australian Museum, despite the institution’s controversial decision to acquire a piece of perspex vandalised by the same anti-gas activist group that targeted the Woodside chief executive’s family home.

As the WA government expressed its displeasure about the museum’s decision to accept the perspex that protected the Frederick McCubbin masterpiece Down on His Luck when it was attacked by activists from Disrupt Burrup Hub, the museum’s chief executive, Alec Cole, said Woodside had indicated its ongoing support for the organisation.

The Australian revealed the museum’s decision on Wednesday, with the woman who spray-painted the Woodside logo on the artwork, Joana Partyka, saying the museum’s acceptance of the piece had been “validating” for her after she had previously been convicted of causing criminal damage.

Disrupt Burrup Hub campaigner Joana Partyka with the sheet of perspex spray painted with the Woodside logo that has been acquired by the WA Museum.

Mr Cole told Perth radio station 6PR the museum’s acquisition of the piece was simply an example of the museum “doing our job”.

“We’re not publicising vandalism, what museums do is they ­document and catalogue the stories of our world,” he said.

“We’ve got over eight million items in our collection, in the state collection, and amongst them you’ll find a whole range of items that refer to conflict, to protest … there are always debates about these things, and it’s museums (and) libraries’ duty to document these things.”

Woodside has been a major donor to the WA Museum for decades, and the museum’s dedicated space for students is called the Woodside Learning Studio.

Mr Cole said Woodside understood the museum’s decision.

Alec Cole, CEO of the WA Museum, with former WA arts minister John Day. Picture: Ross Swanborough

“I should say we’ve had great support from our Woodside colleagues over this instance, because they also recognise this is what museums do,” he said.

“We’ve worked with Woodside for well over 20 years, they’ve been one of the great supporters of the museum and then one of the great supporters of environmental research in marine environment.”

But WA Deputy Premier and Transport Minister Rita Saffioti told reporters that she did not accept the museum’s argument that it was simply preserving a piece of cultural history.

“It’s not something I would do as the head of a museum,” she said.

“We don’t keep the (train) carriages that people have graffitied, we clean the graffiti off because it’s illegal behaviour.”

Disrupt Burrup Hub’s activities targeting Woodside have included blocking roads in the Perth CBD and at Woodside’s Pilbara operations, forcing the evacuation of its Perth headquarters, attempting to smuggle smoke bombs into the company’s annual general meeting, and – most controversially – targeting the home of chief executive Meg O’Neill. In the latter instance, the activists were accompanied by a film crew from the ABC’s Four Corners program.

Two of the activists associated with the attempted protest at Ms O’Neill’s family home appeared in the Perth magistrates court on Thursday, where they pleaded guilty to charges relating to the annual general meeting smoke bomb incident.

Gerard Mazza and Jesse Noakes, along with Tahlia Stolarski, all agreeing to plead guilty to counts of creating a false belief. Charges of aggravated burglary were dropped.

WA activist protester Jesse Noakes. Picture: Paul Garvey

Outside the court, Mr Mazza thanked the WA Museum for deciding to accept the vandalised perspex.

“What people like Joana is doing is heroic. It is great that the museum has recognised what is truly historic here, they’ve taken a long view of history,” he said.

He said future generations would be shocked and outraged by Woodside’s sponsorship of the museum.

“I imagine there’s all kinds of political pressures on it, but I’m sure there are people in the museum who want that Woodside sponsorship to end. I’m sure there are ordinary West Australians going to that museum who don’t want to see the name Woodside up on the wall,” he said.

An unrepentant Mr Mazza laughed off the significance of the trio’s guilty pleas, saying they were only “guilty of pulling off an excellent prank and excellent hoax against Woodside”.

“If we want to talk about creating a false belief, then we need to talk about Woodside and we need to talk about the WA government, because both Woodside and the WA Government are guilty as sin when it comes to creating false beliefs,” he said.

“They are guilty of creating the false belief that six billion tonnes of carbon emissions from the Burrup Hub isn’t going to cause disastrous climate breakdown.

“They are guilty of creating the false belief that acidic emissions from the Burrup Hub aren’t going to destroy the Murujuga rock art.”

One of McCubbin’s descendants also backed the museum’s move. The artist’s great granddaughter Margot Edwards said it was the museum’s job to collect material significant to WA’s cultural life.

The Western Australian Museum has acquired the sheet of perspex that was spray painted with the Woodside logo by a climate activist. The sheet was protecting Australian artist Frederick McCubbin’s masterpiece Down on His Luck.

“As an act of protest drawing attention to the impacts of the expansion of fossil fuel extraction in our northwest, on the priceless ancient Indigenous cultural heritage of the Burrup Peninsula, the perspex on McCubbin’s painting was an effective palette for this radical protest,” she said.