The Guggenheim Museum in New York City has joined the expanding list of institutions that have removed the name of the disgraced Sackler family. The family, owners of Purdue Pharma and widely known for manufacturing and deceptively marketing the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin, recently agreed to pay up to $6 billion to resolve lawsuits brought by communities harmed by the opioid epidemic in the United States. The settlement also included a provision letting museums and other recipients of Sackler donations remove the family name from halls, spaces, and endowed positions without facing penalties.
The museum’s arts learning hub, formerly called the Sackler Center for Arts Education, was created with a $7 million gift from Mortimer D. Sackler, one of the original co-founders of Purdue Pharma. It is now named simply the Center for Arts Education. The renaming was first reported by Artnet and later confirmed by a Guggenheim spokesperson, who told Hyperallergic that the decision was made jointly by the museum and the Mortimer D. Sackler family.
“We believe this decision is in the best interest of the Museum and the vital work it does,” the spokesperson added. The change was made quietly on May 3, with no public announcement from the museum.
The Guggenheim’s move comes after the National Gallery in London last week removed a sign bearing the Sackler name from a gallery devoted to 17th- and 18th-century British artists, long known as the Sackler Room after Mortimer and his wife Theresa donated funds to renovate it in 1992. The Victoria and Albert Museum, whose public courtyard still carries the Sackler name, remains the last major British institution to keep it.
For activists, however, the Guggenheim’s understated decision carries special weight. The museum was a key site for protests by PAIN Sackler, the advocacy group founded by artist Nan Goldin, which staged a “die-in” in the Guggenheim’s signature spiral atrium in 2019. That action became part of a broader campaign exposing how the Sacklers used philanthropy to “art-wash” their opioid-fueled fortune. Soon afterward, the Guggenheim said it would no longer accept gifts from the Sackler family, though it had remained silent about renaming the center until now.
In December, the Metropolitan Museum of Art removed the Sackler name from seven exhibition spaces, including its well-known Temple of Dendur room. Meanwhile, the American Museum of Natural History still has the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics and the Sackler Educational Laboratory.
