This withdrawal concerns in particular the "Sackler" wing where the Egyptian Temple of Dendour is exposed, announced the Met and descendants of the Sackler family in a press release, which mentions an agreement to "allow the museum to continue its main mission".
"The Met was built on the philanthropy of its donors and the Sacklers have been among our most generous supporters," said museum president Dan Weiss, thanking the family for their "elegant gesture."
For their part, the descendants of Mortimer and Raymond Sackler recall that "the first of their donations was made almost 50 years ago, and that it is time to hand over", while the Met had already announced in 2019 waive any funding from this family, following the Tate in London and the Guggenheim in New York.
The same year, the Louvre in Paris, had already masked their name.
The patronage of the Sacklers had allowed them to become one of the most important families of the New York elite, but the opiate crisis made them more and more sulphurous.
The Sackler brothers made their fortune thanks to the success of OxyContin, a powerful but highly addictive pain reliever, prescribed overwhelmingly in the United States from the 1990s. The Purdue laboratory, which the Sackler family had bought in the 1950s, is accused like other big names in pharmaceuticals and distributors for fostering the opioid crisis in the United States by aggressively promoting these drugs, which have generated a large market for illicit and dangerous substances.
This health crisis is at the origin of more than 500,000 deaths by overdose in 20 years in the United States.
© 2021 AFP