New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim museum removed the name of the Sackler family from an education center in recent days, the latest arts institution to distance itself from them over their ties to the prescription painkiller OxyContin.
“The Guggenheim and the Mortimer D. Sackler family have agreed to rename the arts education center,” a spokesperson for the museum said Tuesday, as first reported by Artnet News. “We believe this decision is in the best interest of the Museum and the vital work it does.”
The move comes the same week the National Gallery in London also said it would strip the Sackler name from one of its galleries.
Nan Goldin, a photographer who led a series of high-profile protests against institutions bearing the Sackler name, including a “die-in” at the Guggenheim in 2019, cheered the news.
“Direct action works,” Goldin said in a statement to The New York Times on Tuesday. “Our group has fought for over four years to hold the family accountable in the cultural realm with focused, effective action, and with tremendous support from local groups that fought by our side.”
The Sacklers gave generously to arts institutions around the globe as profits from its drug enterprise, Purdue Pharma, soared. Those institutions built or renamed grand wings after the family, which held a stratospheric place in the world’s philanthropic circles for decades.
But recent investigations have linked the Sacklers to Purdue’s aggressive effort to market OxyContin to millions of Americans and reap billions in profits, even as the opioid epidemic soared. Critics have called on arts institutions and universities to strip the Sackler name from walls, a dam that began to break last year.
New York City’s famed Metropolitan Museum of Art removed the family name from seven exhibition spaces late last year, including the wing housing the Temple of Dendur. Similar decisions have been taken by the Louvre Museum in Paris, Britain’s Tate group of galleries and the British Museum.
The Sacklers reached a deal with almost all U.S. states and thousands of local governments to pay up to $6 billion for its role in the opioid crisis in March, although the family does not acknowledge any wrongdoing or responsibility for the opioid crisis. The full settlement could approach $10 billion over time.
The deal, however, includes a provision that would shield the family from all current and future civil litigation, although that protection would not extend to criminal prosecution. It also included an agreement that the Sacklers not fight any institutions that seek to remove the family name from buildings founded with its support.
Victims of the opioid crisis confronted members of the Sackler family in March.