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P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) is an 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. [1]
Nan Goldin founded P.A.I.N in 2017 [2] in response to coverage of the opioid epidemic and the Sackler family's involvement in production of Oxycontin in The New Yorker and Esquire , and as a result of her own addiction to Oxycontin. [3] The goal of P.A.I.N.'s advocacy work is to hold the Sackler Family accountable and to demand that they fund opioid addiction treatment programs. [4] [5] They highlight the financial support that Sackler has given to museums and cultural institutions as a mechanism for improving their public image, and ask the corporation to instead fund harm reduction, rehabilitation, and public education projects. [6] P.A.I.N. demonstrates at these museums and cultural institutions to request that they remove the Sackler name from their institutions and refuse future Sackler donations. [3] Goldin and twelve other members of P.A.I.N. were arrested during a 2019 protest against New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo's lack of action on the opioid epidemic, which drew a crowd of approximately two hundred protestors. [7] [8] [9]
P.A.I.N. joined with activists and medical professionals for a July 2018 protest at Harvard's Arthur M. Sackler Museum in Cambridge (Massachusetts) to highlight the Sackler Family's position as a funder of art institutions, and to call on the Sackler Family to instead use their money to fund opioid addiction treatment programs. Protesters marched from Harvard Square to the Harvard Art Museums, threw empty prescription bottles on the floor, and took part in a "die-in". [6]
On April 20, 2023, at least 50 protesters associated with P.A.I.N. staged another die-in in the atrium of the Harvard Art Museum, promoting continuing efforts to dename Sackler facilities at Harvard. [10] [11] A Harvard spokesman confirmed that Harvard has been "considering" a proposal to remove the Sackler name since October 2022. [10] [11] [12]
In February 2019, P.A.I.N. organized a surprise demonstration at the Guggenheim Museum in response to the Sackler Family's support of the museum and its Sackler Center for Arts Education. [3] [13] Drawing inspiration from reports that Richard Sackler had stated, upon the launch of the drug Oxycontin into the market, that "The prescription blizzard will be so deep, dense, and white", protesters dropped fake Oxycontin prescriptions into the museum rotunda before unfurling banners and staging a die-in. [14] [15] Banners including tests such as "400,000 dead" and "Take Down Their Name". [16] Fake Oxycontin prescriptions included excerpts from communication between top Purdue Pharma executives, including members of the Sackler Family, about how to increase sales of the drug despite the likelihood that it would be abused. [17]
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was the location of P.A.I.N. protests in 2018 because its largest gallery space is named after the Sacklers. [3] This demonstration included scattering empty prescription bottles around the Temple of Dendur in the Sackler Wing of the museum and staging a die-in. [18] In February 2019, Nan Goldin led protesters from the Guggenheim Museum to the steps of the Metropolitan Museum to continue to put pressure on the museum. [16] Goldin has committed to returning annually to the museum in protest until the institution divests from the Sackler Family, [15] including removing the Sackler name from any museum spaces and declining future donations. [19]
In 2021, the Met and the Sackler family jointly announced that the Sackler name would be removed from seven exhibition spaces, but would remain on two others: the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in the Asian wing and the Marietta Lutze Sackler Gallery in the modern and contemporary wing. [20]
London's National Portrait Gallery declined a $1.8 million donation from the Sackler Trust towards its $65 million renovations after pressure from the art community and the public, including statements by Nan Goldin that she would not show her work there if they continued to accept support from the Sacklers. [21] [22]
Nan Goldin led a group of P.A.I.N. protesters with "Shame on Sackler" banners into the Smithsonian's Freer-Sackler Galleries in April 2018 to draw attention to the support that the Smithsonian institution has received from the Sackler Family. [23]
On July 1, 2019, a protest led by Nan Goldin and P.A.I.N. at the Louvre Museum [24] resulted in the removal of the Sackler family name from wall placards in the Oriental Antiquities gallery, formerly the Sackler Wing of Oriental Antiquities. [25]
In November 2019, Goldin and a group of 30 demonstrators placed "bottles of pills and red-stained "Oxy dollar" bills" on the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) courtyard's tiled floor. The group then staged a die-in. [26] [27]
In 2022, responding to pressure, the museum dropped ties with the Sackler family. In September it removed the most prominent signs to key areas of its Kensington site, the Sackler Centre for Arts Education, and the £2m tiled "Sackler Courtyard". It intends to choose new names for both. [28] [29]
Purdue Pharma has responded to P.A.I.N.'s efforts with reports of an initiative on Corporate Social Responsibility, launched in March 2018. [6] The corporation also spearheaded a PR campaign against activist Nan Goldin to discredit her criticism, before shifting their marketing focus from the United States to the developing countries. [30]
Daniel Weiss, president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has revealed that the museum is reviewing policies which guide the acceptance of gifts to the museum. [3] [13] New York Academy of Sciences and Columbia University have also announced that they will review the philanthropic support they receive from the Sackler Family. [31]
In March 2019, major museums and galleries began to reject support from the Sackler Trust UK, including the National Portrait Gallery and Tate. [21] [2] Tate had previously accepted approximately £4 million from Sackler Family philanthropies. [22] Sackler Trust UK responded by halting new donations. [32] The Louvre was the first museum, in July 2019, to remove the Sackler name from galleries as a result of protests two weeks earlier, although museum leadership refused to comment on the timing of the removal and instead cited museum policy on the duration of naming rights for funders. [25] [33]
Nancy Goldin is an American photographer and activist. Her work often explores LGBT subcultures, moments of intimacy, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the opioid epidemic. Her most notable work is The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1986). The monograph documents the post-Stonewall, gay subculture and includes Goldin's family and friends. She is a founding member of the advocacy group P.A.I.N.. She lives and works in New York City.
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.
Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ × 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably, the Artforum logo is a bold and condensed iteration of the Akzidenz-Grotesk font, a feat for an American publication to have considering how challenging it was to obtain fonts favored by the Swiss school via local European foundries in the 1960s. Artforum is published by Artforum Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Media Corporation.
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.
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 British psychiatrist and entrepreneur who was a co-owner, with his brother Raymond, of Purdue Pharma. 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.
Elizabeth Ann Sackler is a public historian, arts activist, and the daughter of Arthur M. Sackler; as such, she is a member 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 Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a 1985 slide show exhibition and 1986 artist's book publication of photographs taken between 1979 and 1986 by photographer Nan Goldin. It is an autobiographical document of a portion of New York City's No wave music and art scene, the post-Stonewall gay subculture of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the heroin subculture of the Bowery neighborhood, and Goldin's personal family and love life.
Richard Stephen Sackler is an American billionaire businessman and physician who was the chairman and president of Purdue Pharma, a former company best known as the developer of OxyContin, whose connection to the opioid epidemic in the United States was the subject of multiple lawsuits and fines, and that filed for bankruptcy in 2019. It has been claimed that Richard Sackler's Purdue is among ”the worst drug dealers in history” and the Sackler family have been described as the "most evil family in America". The company's downfall was the subject of the 2021 Hulu series Dopesick and the 2023 Netflix series Painkiller.
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".
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Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty is a 2021 book by Patrick Radden Keefe. The book examines the history of the Sackler family, including the founding of Purdue Pharma, their role in the marketing of pharmaceuticals, and the family's central role in the opioid epidemic. The book followed Keefe's 2017 article on the Sackler family in The New Yorker, titled The Family That Built an Empire of Pain.
Joss Sackler is a fashion designer. She is also known for her marriage to David Sackler, whose father Richard Sackler was the chairman and president of Purdue Pharma, and oversaw its manufacturing of the highly addictive opioid Oxycontin, a leading drug in the opioid epidemic.
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All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is a 2022 American biographical documentary film about photographer, artist, and activist Nan Goldin. Interspersed throughout the film is Goldin's most recent work in fighting the Sackler family for their role in causing the opioid epidemic. The film is produced, co-edited and directed by Laura Poitras. Poitras said, "Nan's art and vision has inspired my work for years, and has influenced generations of filmmakers."
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.
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.