Musée du Louvre has removed or taped over all references to the Sackler Family in response to protests from organisations including Nan Goldin’s PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now group.
Now it is time to take the next step and take down the name of this criminal family. – PAIN
The Sackler family has come under increased pressure for their involvement/ownership in the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma, who has been accused of fuelling the US opioid crisis.
Ms Goldin, an American photographer and activist, has organised a number of protests at international museums, the Louvre in Paris being the latest.
PAIN has demanded that the museum change the name of its Sackler wing because the museum has benefited from donations made possible by the production of the prescription painkiller OxyContin.
Jean-Luc Martinez, the president of the Louvre, in an interview on French radio, stated, ‘No room in the museum needed to be renamed because none still bore the name “Sackler”. There is a 20-year statute of limitations to donor name rights, and the Sackler family’s last donation took place in 1993 rather than 1997, he added.
However, dedications at the entrance to the Sackler Wing rooms were still showing the family name in photos taken by PAIN protesters.
PAIN said, “We protested against this attempt to rewrite history and called on Jean-Luc Martinez to rectify his statements as soon as possible and to make official the removal of the Sackler name from the Louvre.” Pain declared, If they “take the liberty of anticipating this official announcement, which may never be forthcoming, and announced that the Sackler name, in the 12 rooms of the Louvre’s Wing of Oriental Antiquities, has been removed”. Then it will be finished. This seems to have now taken place.
The National Portrait Gallery was the first major art institution to rule out a grant from the Sacklers last March. Several cultural institutions, including The Met in NY and the Guggenheim museums, have followed.
“Those of the institutions who have refused future donations from the Sackler family, we commend you for taking the first steps
The Sacklers made their fortune promoting addiction. OxyContin is one of the most addictive painkillers in the history of pharmacology. They advertised and distributed their medication knowing all the dangers. The Sackler family and their private company, Purdue Pharma, built their empire with the lives of hundreds of thousands. The bodies are piling up. In 2018, in the US alone, more than thirty-three thousand people died from opioid overdoses, half of them from prescription opioids; 80 percent of those who use heroin or buy fentanyl on the black market began with an opioid prescription. These statistics are growing exponentially.