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Scotland’s V&A Dundee museum has removed the Sackler name from its displays as a result of the family’s alleged links to the US opioid crisis
Lauren Heath-Jones | Planet Attractions | 06 Sep 2023
The V&A Dundee received a £500,000 donation from the Sackler Trust before its opening in 2018 Credit: Hufton Crow
The V&A Dundee museum in Scotland has become the latest institution to remove the Sackler name from its displays due to the family’s alleged links to the US opioid crisis.
According to the BBC, the museum received a £500,000 (US$628,000, €586,000) donation from the Sackler Trust - the Sackler family’s charitable foundation - before opening its doors in September 2018.
However, signage acknowledging the donation has since been taken down, following accusations that the Sackler family profited from and even fuelled the opioid crisis via its pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma, which manufactured the painkiller OxyContin.
A second sign in the museum’s Oak Room was previously removed in September 2022.
The move comes after several other museums, including London’s V&A museum, took similar action. However, V&A Dundee has revealed that it will not be returning the donation to the Sackler Trust.
“Along with many other cultural organisations in the UK and abroad, V&A Dundee has removed signage relating to the Sackler Trust,” a V&A spokeswoman told the BBC.
“V&A Dundee, like other organisations who removed crediting, is not in talks to return the historic capital support received for the creation of the museum, which was made before V&A Dundee opened in 2018.”
The Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University in Oxfordshire, UK, took a similar course of action, confirming in a statement that the Sackler name had been removed from the museum but that “all donations received from the Sackler family and their trusts will be retained by the University for their intended educational purposes.”
Other cultural institutions that have cut ties with the Sacklers include the Louvre in Paris, France, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, US, as well as several UK institutions such as the British Museum, the National Gallery and the Tate group.
Purdue Pharma is currently facing legal action in the US, with an appeals court approving a settlement that provided legal protection to the family in exchange for payments of up to US$6bn (€5.6bn, £4.8bn) for treatment programmes earlier this year. The US Supreme Court later rejected the settlement and is now preparing to hear oral arguments in December.
Museums and galleries
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