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List of things named after the Sackler family

The Sackler family has donated to numerous cultural institutions and universities, which named different things after the family. Following public revelations of the Sacklers' involvement in the opioid epidemic, groups such as P.A.I.N. began lobbying for the removal of the Sackler name. As part of the bankruptcy settlement for Purdue Pharma, which was owned by the Sackler family, they allowed institutions to remove their name from scholarships and buildings.

United States

  • The American Museum of Natural History contained the Sackler Educational Laboratory and Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics. Both have since removed the Sackler name.
  • In 2016, the Dia Art Foundation created the Sackler Institute, but removed the name in 2019.
  • The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum formerly contained the Sackler Center for Arts Education, removing the family's name in 2022. The museum had previously decided in 2019 that it would no longer accept donations from the Sacklers; they had donated $9 million from 1995 to 2015.
  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art had a Sackler Wing that contained the Temple of Dendur; the name was removed in 2021.
  • Tufts University removed the family's name from the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences, the Arthur M. Sackler Center for Medical Education, the Sackler Laboratory for the Convergence of Biomedical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, the Sackler Families Fund for Collaborative Cancer Biology Research, and the Richard S. Sackler, M.D. Endowed Research Fund in 2019. Earlier that year, the Massachusetts Attorney General had argued that Purdue Pharma promoted OxyContin using its connections to Tufts.
  • Yale University had a Sackler Institute for Biological, Physical and Engineering Sciences and two professorships endowed by the family: the David A. Sackler Professor of Pharmacology and the Richard Sackler and Jonathan Sackler Professorship in Internal Medicine. The university stopped accepting donations from the Sacklers in 2019 and began fully severing ties with the Sacklers in 2021.
  • NYU Langone Health had a Sackler Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences. The institute ceased accepting donations from the family in 2019. Named after the family since its founding in 1980, it has since been renamed the Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences.
  • Harvard University has two buildings named after Arthur Sackler: The Sackler Building which is used by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and The Arthur M. Sackler Museum, which is one of three art museums on Harvard's campus. Harvard students have protested to have the Sackler name removed, citing the link between his family's involvement in the opioid crisis. Harvard has kept the use of the Sackler name and has not returned any of the family's donations because, according to President Lawrence S. Bacow, of "legal and contractual obligations." Bacow also justified the naming by stating that the buildings were named after Arthur Sackler, who died before Oxycontin was introduced
  • In 2024, the National Academy of Sciences petitioned the Superior Court in Washington DC to be allowed to repurpose about $30 million in endowment funds named for the Sackler family—donations which had begun in 2008.
  • The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. has not been renamed.

United Kingdom

In 2023, Royal Museums Greenwich said they would remove Theresa Sackler's name from their list of 'major supporters'.

France

In July 2019 the Louvre removed the Sackler name from a wing of 12 rooms that contained eastern antiquities. The Louvre issued a statement that the museum had a policy of only naming rooms for 20 years and given that the Sackler donation had been made in 1996 and 1997, the naming period was over. The removal followed a protest led by Nan Goldin at the beginning of the month.

Germany

Following a donation in 2002, the Jewish Museum Berlin named the Sackler Staircase after the family. In April 2019, the museum announced it would decline any new donations from the family, though it would not rename the staircase nor return the initial donation.

China

  • Peking University has a museum of art and Chinese archeology named after Arthur Sackler.

Israel

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