organization:royal opera house

  • The #Opioid Timebomb: The #Sackler family and how their painkiller fortune helps bankroll London arts | London Evening Standard
    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/the-opioid-timebomb-the-sackler-family-and-how-their-painkiller-fortune-

    We sent all 33 non-profits the same key questions including: will they rename their public space (as some organisations have done when issues arose regarding former benefactors)? And will they accept future Sackler philanthropy?

    About half the respondents, including the Royal Opera House and the National Gallery, where Dame Theresa Sackler is respectively an honorary director and a patron, declined to answer either question.

    Of the rest, none said it planned to erase the Sackler name from its public space. The organisations’ positions were more guarded on future donations.

    Only the V&A, Oxford University, the Royal Court Theatre and the National Maritime Museum said outright that they were open to future Sackler grants.

    The V&A said: “The Sackler family continue to be a valuable donor to the V&A and we are grateful for their ongoing support.”

    Millions for London: Where Sackler money has gone
    MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES

    Serpentine Galleries

    Grants received/pledged: £5,500,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Serpentine Sackler Gallery
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    Tate

    Grants received/pledged: £4,650,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Gallery, Sackler Escalators, Sackler Octagon
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    Dulwich Picture Gallery

    Grants received/pledged: £3,491,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Centre for Arts Education
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    V&A Museum

    Grants received/pledged: £2,500,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Courtyard
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Yes

    The Design Museum

    Grants received/pledged: £1,500,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Library and Archive
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? No reply

    Natural History Museum

    Grants received/pledged: £1,255,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Biodiversity Imaging Laboratory
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    National Gallery

    Grants received/pledged: £1,050,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Room (Room 34)
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    National Portrait Gallery

    Grants received/pledged: £1,000,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Pledged grant still being vetted
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Being vetted. Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    The Garden Museum

    Grants received/pledged: £850,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Garden
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? No reply

    National Maritime Museum

    Grants received/pledged: £230,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Research Fellowships
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Yes

    Museum of London

    Grants received/pledged: Refused to disclose grants received
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Hall
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    Royal Academy of Arts

    Grants received/pledged: Refused to disclose grants received
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Wing, Sackler Sculpture Gallery
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    THE PERFORMING ARTS

    Old Vic

    Grants received/pledged: £2,817,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Productions and projects
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    Royal Opera House

    Grants received/pledged: £2,500,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Won’t say
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    National Theatre

    Grants received/pledged: £2,000,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Pavilion
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    Shakespeare’s Globe

    Grants received/pledged: £1,660,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Studios
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    Royal Court Theatre

    Grants received/pledged: £360,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Trust Trainee Scheme
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Yes

    UNIVERSITIES/RESEARCH

    University of Oxford

    Grants received/pledged: £11,000,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Bodleian Sackler Library, Keeper of Antiquities
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Yes

    University of Sussex

    Grants received/pledged: £8,400,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    King’s College, London

    Grants received/pledged: £6,950,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Institute for Translational Neurodevelopment
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    The Francis Crick Institute

    Grants received/pledged: £5,000,000
    Used to fund (among other things): One-off funds raised via CRUK to help build the Crick
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? N/A

    UCL

    Grants received/pledged: £2,654,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Institute for Musculo-Skeletal Research
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    Royal College of Art

    Grants received/pledged: £2,500,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Building
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    The Courtauld Institute of Art

    Grants received/pledged: £1,170,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Research Fellowship, Sackler Lecture Series
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    Royal Ballet School

    Grants received/pledged: £1,000,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Won’t say
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    Imperial College London

    Grants received/pledged: £618,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Knee research
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    Old Royal Naval College

    Grants received/pledged: £500,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Gallery
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    OTHER

    Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

    Grants received/pledged: £3,100,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Crossing footbridge
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    Moorfields Eye Hospital

    Grants received/pledged: £3,000,000
    Used to fund (among other things): New eye centre (pledged only)
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    The London Library

    Grants received/pledged: £1,000,000
    Used to fund (among other things): The Sackler Study
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    The Prince’s Trust

    Grants received/pledged: £775,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Programmes for disadvantaged youth
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    Westminster Abbey

    Grants received/pledged: £500,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Restoration of Henry VII Chapel
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    Royal Hospital for Neurodisability

    Grants received/pledged: £350,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Won’t say
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? No reply

    cc @hlc

    • Rob Reich, an ethics professor at Stanford University, has said that non-profits taking future Sackler donations could be seen as being “complicit in the reputation-laundering of the donor”.

      La liste ci dessus ne concerne que la GB mais en France la liste doit être longue aussi et encore plus aux USA et probablement un peu partout dans le monde.

      But our FoI requests revealed that at least one major Sackler donation has been held up in the vetting process: namely a £1 million grant for the National Portrait Gallery.

      The gallery said: “The Sackler Trust pledged a £1 million grant in June 2016 for a future project, but no funds have been received as this is still being vetted as part of our internal review process.

      Each gift is assessed on a case-by-case basis and where necessary, further information and advice is sought from third parties.”

      It added that its ethical fundraising policy sets out “unacceptable sources of funding” and examines the risk involved in “accepting support which may cause significant potential damage to the gallery’s reputation”.

    • What do the Sacklers say in their defence? The three brothers who founded Purdue in the Fifties — Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond — are dead but their descendants have conflicting views.

      Arthur’s daughter Elizabeth Sackler, 70, said her side of the family had not benefited a jot from OxyContin, which was invented after they were bought out in the wake of her father’s death in 1987. She has called the OxyContin fortune “morally abhorrent”.

      Her stepmother, British-born Jillian Sackler, who lives in New York and is a trustee at the Royal Academy of Arts, has called on the other branches of the family to acknowledge their “moral duty to help make this right and to atone for mistakes made”.

      But the OxyContin-rich branches of the family have remained silent. Representatives of Mortimer’s branch — the London Sacklers — said nobody was willing to speak on their behalf and referred us to Purdue’s communications director, Robert Josephson. He confirmed that the US-based Sacklers — Raymond’s branch — would not speak to us either, but that a Purdue spokesman would answer our questions.

      We asked the Purdue spokesman: does Purdue, and by extension the Sacklers, acknowledge the opioid crisis and a role in it?

      “Absolutely we acknowledge there is an opioid crisis,” he said, from Purdue’s HQ in Stamford, Connecticut. “But what’s driving the deaths is illicitly manufactured #fentanyl from China. It’s extremely potent and mixed with all sorts of stuff.”

      –—

      Philip Hopwood, 56, whose addiction to OxyContin and other opioids destroyed his £3 million business and his marriage, said: “If the Sackler family had a shred of decency, they would divert their philanthropy to help people addicted to the drugs they continue to make their fortune from.

      “The non-profits should be ashamed. At the very least they should be honest about the source of their funds.

      The V&A should rename their courtyard the OxyContin Courtyard and the Serpentine should call their gallery the OxyContin Gallery.

      “The money that built these public spaces comes from a drug that is killing people and ruining lives. They can no longer turn a blind eye. I’d feel sick to walk into a Sackler-named space.”

  • Infographic: #Culture #Clash – Arts & Oil Money
    http://platformlondon.org/p-publications/artoilinfographic

    The research shows that using the £500,000 figure, BP’s sponsorship money represents:
    0.3% of Tate’s total income
    0.4% of the British Museum’s total income
    0.5% of the Royal Opera House’s total income
    2.9% of the National Portrait Gallery’s total income. -