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The opioid controversy should prompt cultural institutions to take the Sackler name off buildings. What takes them so long?I was pleased to hear that the V&A Dundee has finally dropped the Sackler signs from its site. The museum had received a £500,000 donation from the Sackler Trust before its opening in September 2018. Until now, a plaque in the entrance hall bore the name of the family whose company was responsible for making the lethally addictive opioid OxyContin. The company, Purdue Pharma, pleaded guilty in October 2022 to three felonies including conspiring to defraud US officials and misconduct relating to the marketing of the drug.I have never understood why art and cultural institutions have been so slow and reluctant to act on unlinking themselves from ethically corrupt companies. At one point, it felt as if I couldn’t visit a cultural site without encountering the Sackler Centre for arts education, or the Sackler Courtyard. There was even the Sackler Escalator at Tate Modern until 2022, and the Sackler windows at Westminster Abbey are still in use. American artist and activist Nan Goldin’s 2022 film All the Beauty and the Bloodshed captures her journey with opioid addiction and highlights the “reputation laundering” of the Sacklers through donations to museums and galleries. We art lovers should not rest until our art institutions recognise that all philanthropy is not virtuous. So to the National Theatre, the Roundhouse and the Natural History Museum: all eyes are on you to wash the Sackler name from your walls. Continue reading...