As Part of a $4.5 Billion Oxycontin Settlement, the Sackler Family Has Promised Not to Lend Its Name to Museums for Nine Years
Critics say the agreement between prosecutors and the Sackler family doesn t go far enough.
Sackler PAIN protesting the Louvre in Paris. Photo courtesy of Sackler PAIN.
The highly contested Purdue Pharma settlement over the prescription painkiller OxyContin is one step closer to being finalized, as 15 states have dropped their opposition to the company’s bankruptcy restructuring plan.
In return, the pharmaceuticals giant has agreed to release millions of documents, and the Sackler family, who own the company, will contribute an additional $50 million to a $4.5 billion settlement fund set to be paid out over the next nine years.
The war on drugs in the United States has been a failure that has ruined lives, filled prisons and cost a fortune. It started during the Nixon administration with the idea that, because drugs are bad for people, they should be difficult to obtain. As a result, it became a war on supply.
As first lady during the crack epidemic, Nancy Reagan tried to change this approach in the 1980s. But her “Just Say No” campaign to reduce demand received limited support.
Over the objections of the supply-focused bureaucracy, she told a United Nations audience on Oct. 25, 1988: “If we cannot stem the American demand for drugs, then there will be little hope of preventing foreign drug producers from fulfilling that demand. We will not get anywhere if we place a heavier burden of action on foreign governments than on America’s own mayors, judges and legislators. You see, the cocaine cartel does not begin in Medellín, Colombia. It begins in the streets of New York, Miami, Los Angeles and ev
Had her life been more conventional, Lorraine O’Grady would have been, that Thursday in June 1980, at Wellesley College for her 25th class reunion.
Instead, she was donning a dress hand-stitched from 180 pairs of white gloves accessorized with a tiara, sash and cat-o’-nine-tails and heading to the gallery Just Above Midtown, to carry out a guerrilla-theater intervention.
O’Grady, a daughter of Jamaican immigrants in Boston, had a picaresque itinerary already. An economics graduate, she had worked for the Labor and State Departments, including as an intelligence analyst in the period leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis; attempted a novel in Europe; dropped out of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; run a translation agency in Chicago; been a New York rock critic. Two marriages, both brief, were over.
Lorraine OâGrady, Still Cutting Into the Culture
And at 86, the pioneering conceptual artist isnât done yet. Sheâs getting her first retrospective ever, at the Brooklyn Museum.
Lorraine OâGradyâs retrospective opens March 5 at the Brooklyn Museum. âIâm working on the skin of the culture and Iâm making incisions,â she says.Credit.Lelanie Foster for The New York Times
Feb. 19, 2021
Had her life been more conventional, Lorraine OâGrady would have been, that Thursday in June 1980, at Wellesley College for her 25th class reunion.
Instead, she was donning a dress hand-stitched from 180 pairs of white gloves â accessorized with a tiara, sash and cat-oâ-nine-tails â and heading to the gallery Just Above Midtown, to carry out a guerrilla-theater intervention.
By Madeleine Muzdakis on February 14, 2021
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a must-see for art lovers who happen to find themselves in New York City. An abstract, modern building on Fifth Avenue north of the Metropolitan Museum, the institution contains works from legendary artists of the past century. Color field abstraction paintings by Helen Frankenthaler, early landscapes by Piet Mondrian, and dramatic colors from Wassily Kandinsky are just some of the stunning works to be found within the spiral-shaped galleries of the museum. The building itself designed by Frank Lloyd Wright was the fantastic product of over 700 sketches, six working drafts, and 13 years from commission to ribbon-cutting.