Weeks after the activist group P.A.I.N. protested outside the museum, the Louvre in Paris has become the first major museum to remove the Sackler family name from its walls.
The Sackler family was known as an art philanthropist billionaire family and they had donated a whole collection of Persian and Levantine Antiquities to the museum in the 90’s.
However, the family is now more famous for founding the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma. Protesters from the P.A.I.N. group accused the family’s company of fuelling the opioid crisis in the US by selling a very addictive painkiller called OxyContin.
Months ago, other European and American cultural institutions like the Tate group of museums announced they wouldn’t be accepting donations from the Sackler family anymore.
When the protests started, the Louvre said that the “Theresa and Mortimer Sackler Foundation has supported the renovation of the rooms dedicated to Persian and Levantine Art in 1996–97. Since then, there have been no other donation from the Sackler family”. But on Tuesday, the museum’s president Jean-Luc Martinez told a different version of the story, saying that their last donation dates back to 1993.
Either way, the Louvre’s collection of Persian and Levantine art won’t be known as the Sackler Wing of Oriental Antiquities anymore. On Wednesday, the plaque they had in the gallery was removed and all ‘the Sackler Wing’ signs in the museum were covered.
#Peace.Love.Louvre
