Guggenheim Removes Sackler Name Associated with Opioid Crisis


The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum quietly walked away from the Sacklers last week, erasing the family’s name from an education center due to the family’s ties to the opioid crisis. No public announcement was made.

“The Guggenheim and the Mortimer D. Sackler family have agreed to rename the arts education center,” museum spokeswoman Sara Fox said on Tuesday. “We believe this decision is in the best interest of the museum and its vital work.”

This week, the National Gallery in London also ended its relationship with Sacklers and announced in a joint statement with a foundation that represents part of the family that “room 34 must cease to be named the Sackler Gallery.”

Moves come five months after Metropolitan Museum of Art Sackler removed his name From one of its most popular galleries, home to the Dendur Temple and six other exhibition spaces.

There’s been a surge of resentment due to Sacklers’ ties to OxyContin. Members of the family founded Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, which is regularly accused of contributing to the opioid crisis.

Four years ago, photographer Nan Goldin spearheaded a series of surprise protests highlighting how museums benefit the family.

In 2019, Goldin and his supporters, GuggenheimHe walks his spiral rotunda with anti-Sackler banners as he storms counterfeit OxyContin prescriptions from balconies and stage a death scene.

Before that, Goldin and his supporters in March 2018 abandoned Empty pill bottles in the reflecting pool of the Sackler Wing on the Met.

“Direct action works,” Goldin said on Tuesday. Our group has been fighting for more than four years to hold the family culturally accountable through focused, effective action and the tremendous support of local groups fighting alongside us.”

The National Gallery in London isn’t the first cultural institution to promise to remove the Sackler name from its walls. Earlier this year the Tate museums, the Serpentine Galleries and british museum estranged from family.

The Victoria and Albert Museum, whose entrance is called the Sackler Courtyard, is one of the last major cultural institutions to have a relationship with the family. Dame Theresa Sackler served as trustee there until 2019, and the museum’s director, Tristram Hunt, said: told He said removing the family name would be “to deny the past”.

“Removing the names of historic donors is currently not the V&A’s policy,” museum spokeswoman Lucy Dundas said on Tuesday. “Our board of trustees review these questions regularly.”



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *