One of the world’s most prestigious museums is removing the Sackler name from its galleries.
The British Museum announced on Friday that it had agreed with trustees of the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation that “the galleries, rooms, and endowments supported by the Foundation will no longer feature the Sackler name.”
The Sacklers are the owners of Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, a highly addictive painkiller.
Earlier this month the company agreed to a $6 billion deal to settle thousands of lawsuits over its alleged role in the opioid crisis in the U.S., which is believed to have killed 500,000 people over the last two decades.
The Sacklers have denied any wrongdoing, but expressed “regret” that the medication “unexpectedly became part of an opioid crisis that has brought grief and loss to far too many families and communities.”
“We’ve reached [an] agreement with the Raymond & Beverly Sackler Foundation,” the chair of the museum, George Osborne, said Friday on Twitter.
“The Sackler name will be removed from the galleries, rooms and endowments they supported. We’re moving into a new era, presenting our great collection in different ways for new audiences,” he added.
The British Museum received funding from the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation for over 30 years. The money, which supported galleries, education facilities, and research activity, will not be returned to the foundation, according to a news release.
The revered 263-year-old museum is the latest institution to distance itself from the Sackler family.
In 2019, the Louvre museum in Paris announced that it had removed the Sackler name from a wing devoted to Eastern antiquities.
In December, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced plans to remove the family’s name from its galleries.
Last month, Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London also announced the removal of references to the Sackler family from galleries, escalators and elevators.
“The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation first supported the British Museum over thirty years ago and has long admired its work,” trustees said in a statement.
“As the museum develops a new masterplan to transform for the future, we feel this decision comes at a unique moment in the museum’s evolution” the statement added.
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