New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced an agreement with the Sackler family that the institution will no longer name their exhibition halls after them, the BBC reports.
Various arts institutions sponsored by the Sacklers, who owned the opioid-maker Purdue Pharma (manufacturers of OxyContin), have come under increasing pressure over recent years to drop the name of the family which has become synonymous with the opioid crisis in the US.
Since 2019, museums around the world, including London’s Serpentine and Tate galleries and New York’s Guggenheim, have announced they would refuse further donations from the Sacklers, while in Paris, the Louvre removed the name of the family from a major wing of the museum. That same year, the artist Nan Goldin, who played an active role in campaigning against ‘artwashing’ via museums, staged a ‘die in’ at the Met’s Sackler Wing, where the 2,000-year-old Temple of Dendur stands; hundreds of bottles of the painkiller were thrown into the moat around which protestors collapsed and lay on the floor.
Now, seven exhibition spaces at the Met will remove the Sackler name.
In a short press release from the Met, the Sackler family have said: ‘Our families have always strongly supported The Met, and we believe this to be in the best interest of the Museum and the important mission that it serves… The earliest of these gifts were made almost fifty years ago, and now we are passing the torch to others who might wish to step forward to support the Museum.’
Dan Weiss, president and CEO of the Met said: ‘The Met has been built by the philanthropy of generations of donors – and the Sacklers have been among our most generous supporters… This gracious gesture by the Sacklers aids the Museum in continuing to serve this and future generations. We greatly appreciate it.’
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioid addiction has seen nearly half a million deaths by overdose between 1999 and 2019.
