NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Museum of Art is removing the name of the Sackler family, which made billions selling opioids and contributed to a staggering public health crisis in the U.S., from some of its most iconic exhibition spaces.
The New York museum said their names would be pulled from galleries, including the wing that houses the Temple of Dendur, according to a statement on Thursday. The decision was made in agreement with the families of Mortimer Sackler and Raymond Sackler.
“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 Sackler descendants said in a statement. “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.”
The Sacklers were for decades leading figures in global philanthropy, with their name emblazoned on museums around the world. But as the Sacklers, whose company Purdue Pharma LP produced the blockbuster painkiller OxyContin, became the public face of the opioid crisis, organizations including the Met and Louvre came under fire for bearing their name.
In September, a U.S. bankruptcy judge approved Purdue’s plan to resolve thousands of opioid lawsuits that drove it to insolvency. As part of the settlement, the Sacklers agreed to contribute about $4.5 billion, sell their pharmaceutical holdings and forfeit their equity in Purdue. (The Sacklers themselves are not the subject of the bankruptcy proceedings involving Purdue Pharma, but some members of the family are named alongside the company in the civil lawsuits.)
In exchange, they will receive lifetime immunity from civil liability over their role in the opioid crisis and largely preserve the bulk of their fortune, an estimated $11 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
While the Met, the Louvre and other institutions, have stripped the name in recent years or distanced themselves from the family, the name remains on the Sackler Library at Oxford and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Institute for Biological, Physical and Engineering Sciences at Yale.
“The Met has been built by the philanthropy of generations of donors – and the Sacklers have been among our most generous supporters,” Dan Weiss, President and chief executive officer of The Met, said in the release.
