The V&A Dundee has become the latest UK museum to remove a reference to the money it received from the Sackler family amid continuing anger over its central role in the opioid epidemic in the US.
The £80m museum, Scotland’s first devoted to design, opened in 2018 and had among its donors the Sackler Trust, which gave £500,000.
The contribution was recognised by a plaque in the entrance hall, which includes the names of major donors.
It has now emerged that the Sackler name was last month removed, erasing any public mention of it at the museum.
It follows the dropping, last October, of the name at the V&A in London with Sackler no longer referenced in the museum’s arts education centre or on the £2m Exhibition Road entrance, which opened in 2017.
Members of the Sackler family are owners of Purdue Pharma, makers of the addictive drug OxyContin, which has played a key role in an opioid epidemic that has led to more than 500,000 overdose deaths in the US over two decades.
Purdue last year agreed pay to up to $6bn (£4.7bn) to settle thousands of lawsuits with a deal that would shield members of the Sackler family from further legal action.
The story has become even more widely known because of the Netflix drama Painkiller, released last month, which stars Matthew Broderick as Richard Sackler, the head of the company.
The V&A has faced criticism for being slow to drop the Sackler name. In 2019 its director, Tristram Hunt, said the museum was proud of the support it had received from the family. “We are not going to be taking names down or denying the past,” he said.
But the museum soon became isolated as cultural institutions around the world followed the example set by organisations such as the National Portrait Gallery in severing ties and distancing themselves from the Sackler family.
The name was once ubiquitous in galleries and universities, from the Sackler wing at the Metropolitan Museum in New York to the Sackler escalator at Tate Modern. Now it is difficult to find.
A Sackler family stained-glass window remains at Westminster Abbey but the abbey’s website notes “with sadness the suffering caused in the USA by opioid addiction. Projects at the Abbey are no longer supported by charitable trusts associated with the Sackler family”.
When the V&A dropped the Sackler name last year the artist and activist Nan Goldin said: “The V&A has been the last bastion of holdouts in terms of those supporting the Sacklers.”
The latest move by V&A Dundee has been welcomed by the Scottish Drugs Forum, which this summer suggested the museum might also want to commemorate those who had died of drug overdoses.
Kirsten Horsburgh, the chief executive of the forum, said: “The celebration of the Sackler bequest was inappropriate and the V&A, by this action, have acknowledged that.
“We welcome that of course. Scotland and the city of Dundee, specifically, has seen untold damage caused by drugs as a result of the war on people who use drugs. Sadly that approach and attitude continues across the country.”
A spokesperson for V&A Dundee said: “Along with many other cultural organisations in the UK and abroad, V&A Dundee has removed signage relating to the Sackler Trust. It was agreed by V&A Dundee’s board to remove the final piece of Sackler Trust crediting in August 2023.”
