In this context, the name Sackler is best known as that of the
family that built Purdue Pharma and developed OxyContin.
At Harvard, however, Sackler carries vastly different implications. A huge portion
of our Asian art collection comes directly from their family, and various
other buildings and rooms also display the family name as a result of accepting a
vast sum of donations.
Tied together by an extensive history of benefaction and legal documents, Harvard
now finds it impossible to shed itself of this name and its associations. Regardless of
what we can do to alter the past, however, we recognize the necessity of acknowledging all perspectives and
experiences of this complicated, devastating issue, listening to additional voices, and through
this modifying our practices going forward to permanently prevent the reoccurrence of
anything similar.
The Arthur M. Sackler Building and Harvard are public-facing institutions with an
educational mission. They teach people how to be civically engaged scholars who
practice the responsible telling of history, which includes acknowledging and
validating all perspectives of a complex issue. We aspire to do the same and to
prompt other museums and educational institutions to reexamine how their funding
practices can better represent the interests of the communities and the public that they serve.