Articles repérés par Hervé Le Crosnier

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  • Louvre Removes Sackler Family Name From Its Walls - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/arts/design/sackler-family-louvre.html

    The Louvre in Paris has removed the name of the Sackler family from its walls, becoming the first major museum to erase its public association with the philanthropist family linked with the opioid crisis in the United States.

    The Louvre’s collection of Persian and Levantine artifacts is housed in a wing that has been known as the Sackler Wing of Oriental Antiquities since 1997.

    But on Wednesday, a plaque acknowledging the Sacklers’ donations had been removed from the gallery’s entrance, and references to “the Sackler Wing” on other signs in the museum had been covered with gray tape.

    Members of the Sackler family own Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, an enormously profitable and frequently abused painkiller that is the subject of numerous lawsuits in the United States.

    Les faux-culs !!!

    Nine other signs in the building that referenced the wing had been taped over. Ms. Aguirre said another large sign that acknowledged the Sackler donation had also been removed.References to “the Sackler Wing” have also been removed from the Louvre’s website.

    On Tuesday, Jean-Luc Martinez, the museum’s president, told RTL, a French radio station, that the Sackler name had been taken down because the Louvre’s policy on naming rights is that they last for 20 years.

    A spokeswoman for the Louvre did not respond to emails asking why, if naming rights only lasted 20 years, the name had not been painted over earlier.

    The Sackler family declined to comment through a spokesman from Edelman, the public relations firm that represents them in Britain.

    Ms. Goldin said she recognized that many museums could not follow the Louvre’s example without breaking their contracts, but she hoped they found a way. “I know that the museums, especially in America, have enormous trouble being funded and it’s so important museums stay open,” she said. “But museums are also about ethics and morality.”

    A spokeswoman for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which has a Sackler Courtyard, said in an emailed statement on Wednesday that the museum was “not considering the removal of any signage related to our past or present donors.”

    “We’re proud to have been supported by the Sacklers,” Tristram Hunt, the museum’s director, told the BBC on July 10.

    Tate did not intend to rename the Sackler escalator at Tate Modern, it said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.

    A spokeswoman for the Jewish Museum in Berlin said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that the Louvre’s move did not change an earlier statement about its Sackler staircase.

    “We will not be changing the name because we feel that renaming would be an inappropriate attempt to disguise what happened,” that statement, issued in March, said. “It would also contradict the fact that we acted in good faith.”

    #Opioides #Sackler #Louvre #Philanthropie