The Sackler family has donated to numerous cultural institutions and universities, which named different things after the family. Following public revelations of the Sacklers' involvement in the opioid epidemic, groups such as P.A.I.N. began lobbying for the removal of the Sackler name. [1] As part of the bankruptcy settlement for Purdue Pharma, which was owned by the Sackler family, they allowed institutions to remove their name from scholarships and buildings. [2]
Dedication | Organisation | Location | Status | References |
---|---|---|---|---|
Sackler Galleries | Ashmolean Museum | Oxford | Name removed in 2023 | [21] |
Sackler Keeper of Antiquities | Ashmolean Museum | Oxford | Name removed in 2023 | [21] |
Sackler Learning Officer | Ashmolean Museum | Oxford | Name removed in 2023 | [21] |
Raymond & Beverly Sackler Galleries of the Ancient Levant | British Museum | London | Name removed in 2022 | [22] |
Sackler Library | City and Guilds of London Art School | London | Name removed by 2023 | [23] [24] [25] |
Sackler Library | Design Museum | London | Name removed in 2022 | [26] |
Sackler Director | Dulwich Picture Gallery | London | Name removed in 2022 | [27] |
Sackler Centre for Arts Education | Dulwich Picture Gallery | London | Presumed renamed [note 1] | [27] |
Sackler Garden | Garden Museum | London | Renamed 'Courtyard Garden' | [30] [31] [32] |
Sackler Crossing | Kew Gardens | London | Name removed in 2022 | [33] [34] |
Sackler Institute for Translational Neurodevelopment | King's College London | London | Name removed in 2023 | [35] [36] [37] |
Sackler Study Room | London Library | London | Name removed in 2022 | [38] |
Sackler Hall | Museum of London | London | Presumed closed [note 2] | [40] |
Sackler Room | National Gallery | London | Name removed in 2022 | [41] |
Sackler Pavilion | National Theatre | London | In use | [30] [42] |
Sackler Biodiversity Imaging Laboratory | Natural History Museum | London | In use | [43] |
Sackler Gallery | Old Royal Naval College | London | Unclear [note 3] | [45] |
Sackler Space | The Roundhouse | London | In use | [46] |
Sackler Building | Royal College of Art | London | Renamed 'Painting Building' in 2022 | [47] |
Sackler Trust Trainee Scheme | Royal Court Theatre | London | Scheme suspended in 2019 | [30] [48] |
Serpentine Sackler Gallery | Serpentine Gallery | London | Renamed 'Serpentine North Gallery' in 2021 | [49] |
Sackler Studios | Shakespeare's Globe | London | Name removed in 2022 | [50] |
Sackler Octagon Gallery | Tate Britain | London | Name removed | [51] |
Sackler Escalator | Tate Modern | London | Name removed in 2022 [note 4] | [53] [51] |
Sackler Staircase | Theatre Royal | Glasgow | Name removed in 2022 | [54] |
Institute for Medical Research Sackler Lecture Theatre | University of Cambridge | Cambridge | Name removed 2022 | [55] |
Institute of Astronomy Sackler Lecture Theatre | University of Cambridge | Cambridge | Presumed removed [note 5] | [55] |
Raymond and Beverley Sackler Distinguished Lecture in Archaeology | University of Cambridge | Cambridge | In use | [55] |
Sackler Chair of the UCL Institute of Mental Health | University College London | London | In use | [57] [58] |
Sackler Library | University of Oxford | Oxford | Renamed 'Bodleian Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library' in 2023 | [21] [59] |
Sackler-Clarendon Associate Professor of Sedimentary Geology | University of Oxford Department of Earth Sciences | Oxford | Name removed in 2023 | [21] |
Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science | University of Sussex | Sussex | Renamed 'Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science' in 2022 | [60] [61] [62] |
Sackler Courtyard | Victoria & Albert Museum | London | Name removed in 2022 | [63] |
Sackler Centre for Arts Education | Victoria & Albert Museum | London | Name removed in 2022 | [63] |
Sackler Trust plaque | V&A Dundee | Dundee | Plaque removed in 2023 | [64] [65] |
Sackler windows | Westminster Abbey | London | In use | [66] |
In 2023, Royal Museums Greenwich said they would removed Theresa Sackler's name from their list of 'major supporters'. [36]
In July 2019 the Louvre removed the Sackler name from a wing of 12 rooms that contained eastern antiquities. [67] The Louvre issued a statement that the museum had a policy of only naming rooms for 20 years and given that the Sackler donation had been made in 1996 and 1997, the naming period was over. [67] The removal followed a protest led by Nan Goldin at the beginning of the month. [68]
Following a donation in 2002, the Jewish Museum Berlin named the Sackler Staircase after the family. In April 2019, the museum announced it would decline any new donations from the family, though it would not rename the staircase nor return the initial donation. [69]
Nancy Goldin is an American photographer and activist. Her work explores in snapshot-style the emotions of the individual, in intimate relationships, and the bohemian LGBT subcultural communities, especially dealing with the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Her most notable work is The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. In the slideshow and monograph (1986) Goldin portrayed her chosen "family", meanwhile documenting the post-punk and gay subcultures. She is a founding member of the advocacy group P.A.I.N. against the opioid epidemic. She lives and works in New York City.
The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is an art museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., focusing on Asian art. The Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art together form the National Museum of Asian Art in the United States. The Freer and Sackler galleries house the largest Asian art research library in the country.
Lawrence Seldon Bacow is an American economist and retired university administrator. Bacow served as the 12th president of Tufts University from 2001 to 2011 and as the 29th president of Harvard University from 2018 to 2023. Before that, he was the Hauser leader-in-residence at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School.
The Bodleian Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library holds a large portion of the classical, art historical, and archaeological works belonging to the University of Oxford, England.
Arthur Mitchell Sackler was an American psychiatrist and marketer of pharmaceuticals whose fortune originated in medical advertising and trade publications. He was also an art collector. He was one of the three patriarchs of the controversial Sackler family pharmaceutical dynasty.
The Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences is one of the eight schools that comprise Tufts University. The Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS) is located on the university's health sciences campus in the Chinatown district of Boston, Massachusetts. The school was previously named the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences but on December 5, 2019, the university announced it was removing the Sackler name from the school, because of the Sacklers' role in the opioid epidemic through their ownership of Purdue Pharma.
The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, and four research centers: the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art, the Harvard Art Museums Archives, and the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies. The three museums that constitute the Harvard Art Museums were initially integrated into a single institution under the name Harvard University Art Museums in 1983. The word "University" was dropped from the institutional name in 2008.
The Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences is a medical school affiliated with Tel Aviv University, located in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Purdue Pharma L.P., formerly the Purdue Frederick Company (1892–2019), was an American privately held pharmaceutical company founded by John Purdue Gray. It was sold to Arthur, Mortimer, and Raymond Sackler in 1952, and then owned principally by the Sackler family and their descendants.
Raymond Sackler was an American physician and businessman. He acquired Purdue Pharma together with his brothers Arthur M. Sackler and Mortimer Sackler. Purdue Pharma is the developer of OxyContin, the drug at the center of the opioid epidemic in the United States.
Mortimer David Sackler was an American-born psychiatrist and entrepreneur. He co-owned Purdue Pharma with his brothers Arthur and Raymond. During his lifetime, Sackler's philanthropy included donations to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tate Gallery, the Royal College of Art, the Louvre, and Berlin's Jewish Museum.
Reputation laundering occurs when a person or an organization conceals unethical, corrupt, or criminal behavior or other forms of controversy by performing highly visible positive actions with the intent to improve their reputation and obscure their history.
Vidya Dehejia is a retired academic and the Barbara Stoler Miller Professor Emerita of Indian and South Asian Art at Columbia University. She has published 24 books and numerous academic papers on the art of South Asia, and has curated many exhibitions on the same theme.
Elizabeth Ann Sackler is a public historian, arts activist, and the daughter of Arthur M. Sackler and descendant of the Sackler family. She is the founder of the American Indian Ritual Object Repatriation Foundation and the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum.
The Sackler family is an American family who owned the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma and later founded Mundipharma. Purdue Pharma, and some members of the family, have faced lawsuits regarding overprescription of addictive pharmaceutical drugs, including OxyContin. Purdue Pharma has been criticized for its role in the opioid epidemic in the United States. They have been described as the "most evil family in America", and "the worst drug dealers in history".
P.A.I.N. is an American advocacy organization founded by artist Nan Goldin to respond to the opioid crisis, specifically targeting the Sackler Family for manufacturing, promoting, and distributing the drug Oxycontin through their corporation Purdue Pharma LP.
Philanthropy poses a number of ethical issues:
The Exhibition Road Courtyard is a public courtyard that serves as an entrance to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It is part of the V&A Exhibition Road Quarter entrance and expansion of the Museum, completed in 2017 and designed by architectural practice AL_A, the firm of architect Amanda Levete.
Serpentine North or Serpentine North Gallery is a listed building in Hyde Park, London, which, with the South Gallery, constitutes the Serpentine Galleries, an art exposition space. It was originally known as The Magazine, and also, from 2013 to 2021, as the Serpentine Sackler Gallery. Since 2013, the name The Magazine specifically refers to an extension of the building, a restaurant designed by architect Zaha Hadid.
The Sackler Wing (1978) is located at The Met Fifth Avenue, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's flagship location in New York City. Designed by Kevin Roche and located to the north of the museum's original building, the wing was built to house the Temple of Dendur, brought from Egypt to New York.
We spoke in his office at the University of Sussex, where he is co-director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science. (As the university will no longer be receiving new funding from the Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation, the centre is due to be renamed.)