Goldin Hour: The Opioid Crisis and The Arts

October 12, 2022

By Blake Konkol

Nan Goldin, the revolutionary photographer known for her 1986 slideshow The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, once held her work for ransom from a planned retrospective at the National Protrait Gallery (NPG) in London.^[1] The price requested? Disavowment of a £1 million donation to the institution from a branch of the Sackler family. The Sacklers, owners of the pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma US, have been held responsible for the Opioid crisis that has claimed the lives of over 500,000 people since 1999.^[2] With her activist group Sackler P.A.I.N, Goldin has proven that art has power and protest will triumph.

“I SURVIVED THE OPIOID CRISIS” begins Nan Goldin in her open letter to the Sackler family.^[3] Published in 2018, this statement has served as a rallying cry for those affected by opioid addiction, an epidemic that is inexorably tied to the drug OxyContin, introduced by Purdue Pharma in 1995. Goldin reported “after years of OxyContin [use], I moved to street drugs, including heroin, which deliver a comparable high for much less money, a pattern that experts say has created the public health crisis that has terrified the nation.”^[4] Goldin, who was prescribed OxyContin following a wrist surgery in 2014^[5], eventually overdosed on the highly potent street drug fentanyl.^[6] Since her subsequent stay in a drug addiction treatment facility, Goldin has worked to combat the opioid crisis at its source. She focuses on the makers of the lethal drug: the Sackler family, who consciously disregarded the addictiveness of their new product even when faced with concerns and complaints about its effects on users.^[7]

This article seeks to investigate the recent responses to museum patronage by the Sackler family. In particular, Nan Goldin’s.

What is OxyContin? Who are the Sacklers? Why do we care?

OxyContin is so inexorably tied to PurduePharma that one cannot be discussed without the other. The addictive medication revolutionized the privately owned pharmaceutical company into the multinational powerhouse that it has become.^[8] The Sackler family is PurduePharma; PurduePharma is OxyContin.

The makeup of the family is divided into three branches—each stemming from one of the three Sackler brothers. Arthur, Raymond, and Mortimer Sackler bought Fredricks pharmaceutical company in 1952 and morphed it into the giant PurduePharma.^[9] However, Arthur Sackler, the avid art collector and controversial-in-his-own-right arts patron who was interested in his family name’s legacy, passed away eight years prior to OxyContin’s release.^[10]

Elizabeth Sackler, Arthur’s daughter, has fought Goldin’s open letter to clear her side of the family from the taint of OxyContin since they no longer have a stake in the company; her uncles’ families own 100% of the company.^[11] Elizabeth explained in her response to Goldin’s letter that since her father’s death occurred prior to the drug’s release, her family has never received profits from OxyContin.^[12] Pursuant to this timeline, Arthur’s family has won clarifications from various media outlets that erroneously reported that Arthur Sackler was enriched by the sales of OxyContin.^[13]

Goldin stopped this argument in its tracks.^[14] She and other advocates against the Sackler family posit that responsibility runs deeper than whether or not the Arthur’s family was enriched by the sale of OxyContin. Hailed as the father of medical marketing, Arthur was inducted into the Medical Advertising Hall of Fame for his development of marketing tactics for the sale of Valium, a drug released by Purdue Pharma prior to 1995.^[15] Most notably, he is remembered for his use of “high-pressure and seductive sales techniques that companies like Purdue used to popularize branded pharmaceuticals;” this tactic was later used for the successful popularization of OxyContin.^[16] From this perspective, donations from Arthur’s family members are blood money because their patriarch is just as guilty of wrongdoing as his brothers, regardless of whether he saw profits from OxyContin.

By aiming at the Sackler family, Goldin demands reparations for unwitting addicts who were prescribed OxyContin because of such deceptive marketing tactics. Goldin’s angle against the family focuses on their charitable donations and international rapport with the arts community.

The Sackler family name has been associated with the arts for decades.^[17] The family’s charitable contributions have been memorialized in wings of the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on the education center of the Guggenheim New York, and on a library at th University of Oxford, to name a few.^[18] However, the halls and institutions that once proudly bore the name of this American dynasty now lay bare or have been expeditiously renamed in the past decade: the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum have removed the Sackler name from their walls; the Louvre has taken down the family’s name from its wing of Oriental antiquities; and many other institutions are following suit.^[19] Goldin’s organization Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (P.A.I.N.) labors to rid the art world of the Sackler name and reappropriate the family’s dirty money to support addiction treatment programs and to help survivors.^[20]

Often, concerns about accepting “dirty money” relate less to the “intrinsic filthiness” of the money itself but rather to the social and political consequences of soliciting and accepting donations from tainted entities.^[21] Further, critics of the acceptance of such blood money have argued that “accepting money and other gifts can unjustly elevate the social and political status of others” and “accepting dirty money can subvert appropriate forms of political judgment by motivating attempts to rationalize and defend unjust political consequences and relationships.”^[22] For example, the continual pressure by climate activists on London’s British Museum to disclaim funding from oil giant BP is a testament to the growing trend of ending such “cultural money laundering” through the arts.^[23] Similarly, advocates against the Sacklers explain that the family’s donations, however beneficial to the arts, should not assist the pharmaceutical powerhouse in cultivating a positive public image that overshadows the devastating effects of their business practices.^[24]

Concerns abound within the context of wealthy entities utilizing the arts—and nonprofits, generally—as a tool for rehabilitating their public image following controversy. Patrick Raddin Keefe, known for his exposé on the Sackler family’s involvement in the opioid crisis, explains that this practice is particularly worrisome because “over time, the origins of a clan’s largesse are largely forgotten, and we recall only the philanthropic legacy, prompted by the name on the building.^[25]” Thus, the continued adornment of academic and arts spaces with the Sackler name strikes a nerve with Nan Goldin and many others.

Nan Goldin’s Presence: Then and Now

Goldin’s seminal work The Ballad, as it is referred to informally, has stood as a guidepost for photographers since its release in 1986.^[26] As curator and writer Susan Bright explains, “[Goldin’s] ideas infuse all new work that deals with close family members, friends or ideas of community.”^[27] The quintessential “chosen family” overtones of much of Goldin’s work rang truer than ever following the realignment of her oeuvre in the latter half of the 1980s. The young photographer’s themes saw a shift following the destructive sweep of the AIDS crisis on queer people and intravenous drug users in New York City. Goldin explains that her work is “about trying to feel what another person is feeling.”^[28] The New York artist’s “snapshot” style affords viewers a glimpse into an otherwise secluded world.^[29] This is the point. The cross-dressing, intravenous drug-using, subversive sex-having subjects that are so characteristic of Goldin’s work were, and continue to be, a sector of society so easily erased by the zeitgeist. Goldin’s work sheds light on these dim corners of society.

When the AIDS crisis peaked, Goldin began to document the effects of the virus on her chosen family. “So many people were sick or dying,” Goldin explains, that “there was no way for me to talk about my community or re-enter it without dealing with [the effects of the AIDS epidemic].”^[30] Now that the Opioid epidemic runs rampant, Goldin has reinvigorated her drive to give voice to otherwise marginalized groups. She always does what’s closest to her.^[31] She explains her motivation behind her advocacy in saying, “in the ‘80s, I lost a whole community, and to my mind there’s a generation missing… so are we going to watch now while another generation is being wiped out?”^[32] Goldin strives to not let history repeat itself.

Since her abuse of OxyContin, use of street drugs, eventual overdose, and subsequent recovery, Goldin shines her light to expose another dark corner of society: the empiric reign of one of the world’s richest families. Goldin’s primary objective is to hold the Sackler family accountable for the hundreds of thousands of lives upon which they have built their empire.^[33]

As the face of advocacy against the Sackler family, Goldin has made use of her work as a springboard for financing her efforts with P.A.I.N. by holding print sales, the proceeds from which go to both P.A.I.N. and other charity organizations fighting to correct the injustices of OxyContin.^[34] Not only utilized in fundraising efforts, Goldin has employed her work as leverage against museums to disavow Sackler support. For instance, Goldin conditioned her planned retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery in London on the museum’s refusal of a donation from the Sackler family.^[35] Further, Goldin planned to hold protests at NPG to run concurrently with her retrospective had the gallery accepted the Sackler donation.^[36] The gallery complied with her demand.^[37]

P.A.I.N is perhaps best-known for the protests it holds to bring public awareness to museums’ ill-acting benefactors. Such protests have included die-in demonstrations, hundreds of empty pill bottles thrown into the reflection pool at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and countless fake prescriptions with the text “Shame on Sackler” thrown from the Guggenheim rotunda in February 2019.^[38] Akin to demonstrations by AIDS activist group ACT-UP, P.A.I.N.’s protests are meant to disrupt places known for their tranquility.^[39]

Goldin’s effectiveness is in her all-or-nothing approach to combating injustice. P.A.I.N.’s mission statement is a reflection of this tenacity. In fact, the mission states “we demand the courts seize the Sackler family’s pharmaceutical fortune and use it to fund” addiction treatment with the drug Narcan (Naloxone), Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT), and Harm reduction initiatives.^[40] The group “thank[s] the museums and institutions that have cut ties with Sackler funding and urge[s] all cultural institutions to follow their example and to divest from dirty money.”^[41]

What has become of the Sackler Dynasty?

In 2007, Purdue pleaded guilty to misbranding a prescription opioid pain medication with the intent to defraud or mislead.^[42] Three Purdue corporate officers—Michael Friedman, Howard R. Udell, and Paul D. Goldenheim—also pleaded guilty to misbranding OxyContin. The misbranding of OxyContin as less addictive than it is gave prescribers a sense of security to dispense the drug for patients without warning of possible implications like addiction. This broad-brush prescription of OxyContin–without proper warning–led users like Goldin to graduate from the pills to street narcotics, inflaming the opioid crisis. In addressing the corporate officers’ guilty pleas, the court decided that a restitution process, which would have compensated victims, would have complicated and prolonged the sentencing process because of the difficulty in establishing causation between OxyContin sales and addiction. In its opinion, the court rejected the proposition that Purdue received a favorable resolution because of “politics.” No members of the Sackler family were indicted in the suit.^[43]

In a separate suit decided in 2020, Purdue Pharma LP was ordered to pay upwards of $6 billion in a settlement of multiple criminal and civil charges. Gary L. Cantrell, Deputy Inspector General for Investigations at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, stated, “Purdue’s reckless actions and violation of the law senselessly risked patients’ health and well-being. With our law enforcement partners, we will continue to combat the opioid crisis, including holding the pharmaceutical industry and its executives accountable.”^[44] As part of the 2020 settlement, “the [Sackler Family] agreed not to contest the removal of their name from the many art galleries and museums they have sponsored.^[45]” Despite lost profits, the family has escaped financial responsibility.

P.A.I.N. and supporters are vying for the passage of an act that would resolve this inequity. Entitled “Stop Shielding Assets from Corporate Known Liability by Eliminating Non-Debtor Releases (SACKLER Act),” the proposed bill introduced by House Democrats in March 2022 would prevent individuals like the Sacklers from evading future lawsuits and from shielding their assets.^[46]

Goldin proclaims: “I don’t want their name on anything, except the SACKLER Act. We do want all their money, we want it to go to the communities they’ve devastated. We want transparency, we want their documents released, we want them to face the same jail time as El Chapo or at least small-time dealers … and we don’t want them walking away with immunity.”^[47]

P.A.I.N.’s mission statement continued: “[We] plan for future actions to hold Big Pharma accountable and pressure our government to provide life-saving treatments for people who use drugs.”^[48]

To date, and to the extent known, the Sackler family disclaims any responsibility for this opioid epidemic. A statement released by counsel to the family in early 2022 reads, ​​“[w]hile the families have acted lawfully in all respects, they sincerely regret that OxyContin, a prescription medicine that continues to help people suffering from chronic pain, unexpectedly became part of an opioid crisis that has brought grief and loss to far too many families and communities.”^[49] The statement, and others like it, are an effort to distance the family from the opioid crisis. However, activists like Nan Goldin and museum administrators, among others, labor to ensure the Sackler name remains linked to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of opioid victims.

Conclusion

The art world is often used as a means to preserve family names and maintain wealth accumulated under dubious-–if not outright criminal—circumstances. Increasingly, artists and museums are called to evaluate what practices and conventions should persist amid the ever-changing landscapes of human rights, equity, and justice. More and more, companies like Purdue Pharma and patrons like the Sackler family cannot circumvent the court of public opinion by donating parts of their ill-gotten proceeds to beneficial non-profit organizations. As Connecticut Attorney General William Tong stated, the push against dirty funding will ensure the Sackler “family is remembered throughout history for their callous disdain for human suffering and nothing else.’”^[50] Activists like Nan Goldin are leading the charge against these cultural money laundering efforts in order to hold rapacious actors accountable for their conduct.

About the Author: Blake Konkol (Center for Art Law Summer 2022 Legal Intern) is a law student at Penn State Law, University Park. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Art History from the University of Florida. He has partnered with museums across the country in education and curatorial initiatives. As a former performance artist, Blake is interested in investigating the intersection between artists’ rights and intellectual property disputes.

1. Joanna Walters & Vanessa Thrope, Nan Goldin Threatens London Gallery Boycott Over £1m Gift from Sackler Fund, The Guardian (Feb. 17, 2019), https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/feb/16/nan-goldin-sackler-gift-oxycontin-national-portrait-gallery. ↑

2. Id. ↑

3. Nan Goldin, Nan Goldin, 56 Artforum 5 (2018). ↑

4. Colin Moynihan, Don’t Call Her a Victim: After Surviving Opioids, Nan Goldin Goes After the Makers, The New York Times (Jan. 22, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/arts/design/nan-goldin-OxyContin-addiction-opioid.html ↑

5. Walters & Thrope, Supra note 1. ↑

6. This pattern is far from uncommon. The American Society of Addiction Medicine reported that as many as four out of five people who try heroin today start with prescription painkillers. ↑
7. David Armstrong, Sackler Embraced Plan to Conceal OxyContin’s Strength From Doctors, Sealed Testimony Shows, ProPublica (Feb 21, 2019), https://www.propublica.org/article/richard-sackler-OxyContin-oxycodone-strength-conceal-from-doctors-sealed-testimony. ↑
8. In the 1994 fiscal year, PurduePharma reported a profit of $1 million. OxyContin was released the following year. 1996 saw profits in excess of $11 million; in 1997, $30 million. The growth of the company has increased exponentially since the 1990’s. In 2010, the company reported over $3 billion in profits. ↑
9. Patrick Radden Keefe, The Family That Built an Empire of Pain, The New Yorker (October 23, 2017), https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain. ↑
10. Benjamin Sutton, Elizabeth A. Sackler Supports Nan Goldin in Her Campaign Against OxyContin, Hyperallergenic (January 22, 2018) ↑
11. Id.; David Armstrong, The Family Trying to Escape Blame for the Opioid Crisis, The Atlantic (Apr. 10, 2018), https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/04/sacklers-OxyContin-opioids/557525/. ↑
12. Sutton, Supra note 10. ↑
13. Armstrong, Supra note 7. ↑
14. CHRISTIAN VIVEROS-FAUNÉ, Nan Goldin Gets Your P.A.I.N., The Village Voice (April 21, 2021), https://www.villagevoice.com/2021/04/21/nan-goldin-gets-your-p-a-i-n/. ↑
15. Id. ↑
16. Max Haiven, Our Opium Wars: The Ghosts of Empire in the Prescription Opioid Nightmare, 32 Third Text 662, 666 (2019). ↑
17. Alex Marshall, Louvre Removes Sackler Family Name From Its Walls, New York Times (Jul. 17, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/arts/design/sackler-family-louvre.html. ↑
18. Id. ↑
19. Zachary Small, Guggenheim Removes Sackler Name Over Ties to Opioid Crisis, The New York Times (May 10, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/10/arts/design/guggenheim-sackler-name-opioids.html ↑
20. Sackler PAIN, Mission Statement, Sackler PAIN (2022), https://www.sacklerpain.org/. ↑
21. Id. ↑
22. Id. ↑
23. Elanor Mills, Activists Continue Calls for British Museum to Ditch BP, Museums Association (Apr. 19, 2022), https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2022/04/activists-continue-calls-for-british-museum-to-ditch-bp/. ↑
24. Sackler PAIN, Supra note 20. ↑
25. Radden Keefe, Supra note 8. ↑
26. Description of Nan Goldin, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, The Museum of Modern Art, https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1651? (last visited Oct., 6, 2022) ; Description of Nan Goldin, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, Art Institute Chicago, https://www.artic.edu/artworks/187155/the-ballad-of-sexual-dependency (last visited Oct., 6 2022). ↑

27. Sean O’Hagen, Nan Goldin: ‘I Wanted to Get High from a Really Young Age’, The Observer (Mar. 22, 2014), https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/mar/23/nan-goldin-photographer-wanted-get-high-early-age. ↑

28. Louis Kaplan, Photography and the Exposure of Community: Sharing Nan Goldin and Jean-Luc Nancy, 6 Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities 7, 8 (2001). ↑
29. Id. ↑

30. Id. ↑

31. Moynihan, Supra note 4. ↑

32. Id. ↑

33. Id. ↑
34. VIVEROS-FAUNÉ, Supra note 14. ↑
35. Joanna Walters, Tate art galleries will no longer accept donations from the Sackler family, The Guardian (Mar. 22, 2019), https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/mar/21/tate-art-galleries-will-no-longer-accept-donations-from-the-sackler-family. ↑
36. Id. ↑
37. Id. ↑
38. Masha Gessen, “Nan Goldin Leads a Protest at the Guggenheim Against the Sackler Family,” The New Yorker (Feb. 10, 2019), https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/nan-goldin-leads-a-protest-at-the-guggenheim-against-the-sackler-family. ↑
39. Nurith Aizenman, How To Demand A Medical Breakthrough: Lessons From The AIDS Fight, NPR (Feb. 9, 2019), https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/02/09/689924838/how-to-demand-a-medical-breakthrough-lessons-from-the-aids-fight. ↑
40. Sackler PAIN, Supra note 20. ↑

41. Id. ↑

42. Sutton, Supra note 10. ↑
43. U.S. v. Purdue Frederick Co., Inc., 495 F. Supp. 2d 569 (W.D. Va. 2007) ↑
44. The United States Department of Justice, Justice Department Announces Global Resolution of Criminal and Civil Investigations with Opioid Manufacturer Purdue Pharma and Civil Settlement with Members of the Sackler Family, The United States Department of Justice (Oct. 21, 2020), https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-global-resolution-criminal-and-civil-investigations-opioid ↑
45. Owen Dyer, Opioid lawsuit: Sackler Family Agree Final $6bn Civil Settlement With US States, The BMJ (Mar. 9, 2022) ↑
46. Stop shielding Assets from Corporate Known Liability by Eliminating non-debtor Releases Act or the SACKLER Act, H.R.2096, 117th Congress (2021-2022). ↑
47. VIVEROS-FAUNÉ, Supra note 14. ↑
48. Sackler PAIN, Mission Statement, Sackler PAIN (2022), https://www.sacklerpain.org/. ↑
49. Brian Mann & Martha Bebinger, Purdue Pharma, Sacklers Reach $6 Billion Deal With State Attorneys General, N.P.R. (March 3, 2022), https://www.npr.org/2022/03/03/1084163626/purdue-sacklers-OxyContin-settlement%252523:~:text=Purdue%25252520Pharma%25252520has%25252520pleaded%25252520guilty,by%25252520executives%25252520at%25252520the%25252520company ↑
50. Dyer, Supra note 43. ↑