{"id":178026,"date":"2019-03-27T21:46:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T02:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/03\/27\/a-good-start-8\/"},"modified":"2019-03-27T21:46:00","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T02:46:00","slug":"a-good-start-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/03\/27\/a-good-start-8\/","title":{"rendered":"A Good Start"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Guggenheim Museum has announced that it will no longer take donations from the Sackler family<\/a>, because they have revealed themselves to be little more than amoral drug pushers:<\/p>\n

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York said on Friday that it did not plan to accept future gifts from the family of Mortimer D. Sackler, a philanthropist and former board member whose money has been met with growing unease in the art world as his family\u2019s pharmaceutical interests have been linked to the opioid crisis.<\/p>\n

The Guggenheim\u2019s decision was announced one day after Tate, which runs some of the most important art museums in Britain, announced a similar move<\/a>, saying that \u201cin the present circumstances we do not think it right to seek or accept further donations from the Sacklers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Britain\u2019s National Portrait Gallery also spurned the Sackler family, saying it would not accept a long-discussed $1.3 million donation<\/a> from one of the family\u2019s foundations, the London-based Sackler Trust.<\/p>\n

The Guggenheim announced its decision on Friday in a brief statement that did not mention the opioid crisis or Mr. Sackler\u2019s past on the museum\u2019s board. A museum spokeswoman declined on Friday night to explain its rationale for the move or its decision-making process.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cNo contributions from the Sackler family have been received since 2015,\u201d the statement said. \u201cNo additional gifts are planned, and the Guggenheim does not plan to accept any gifts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

The decision by a series of leading institutions to spurn gifts by the Sacklers, major donors on both sides of the Atlantic, is a potent sign of the deepening disquiet within the art world over the family\u2019s connection to the opioid crisis.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Last month, Daniel Weiss, the president and chief executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, said in a statement that it valued its longstanding relationship with the Sackler family, whose name is on the wing housing the museum\u2019s showpiece Temple of Dendur.<\/p>\n

But he said the museum was \u201ccurrently engaging in a further review of our detailed gift acceptance policies, and we will have more to report in due course.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s nice that the Sacklers are being shunned, as they should be, but I still want to see the Billy Ray Valentine solution.*<\/sup><\/p>\n

*<\/sup>The best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Guggenheim Museum has announced that it will no longer take donations from the Sackler family, because they have revealed themselves to be little more than amoral drug pushers: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York said on Friday that it did not plan to accept future gifts from the family of Mortimer D. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[365,599,368,435,517,364,486],"class_list":["post-178026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-charity","tag-corruption","tag-crimes","tag-drugs","tag-evil","tag-schadenfreude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178026"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}