Topline
The Guggenheim Museum’s education center—once named for the disgraced billionaire Sackler family before their fall from grace over their alleged role in the American opioid epidemic—will be renamed for museum board trustee Gail Engelberg after she and her husband pledged a $15 million gift to the institution, the Guggenheim announced Wednesday.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, on April 16, 2016.
Key Facts
The Gail May Engelberg Center for Arts Education will hold a formal dedication and naming ceremony in November, the Guggenheim said.
Engelberg has supported the Guggenheim in various capacities for 25 years, is the chair of the Guggenheim Foundation’s education committee and previously endowed the Deputy Director of Education, the museum said.
Engelberg told Forbes she is passionate about art education and the way “it connects all of us . . . with our own culture, as well as other cultures past and present,” adding that she hopes the donation will allow for more programming to bring a more diverse audience to the Guggenheim.
For Engelberg to be the center’s new namesake was actually the idea of her husband, Alfred Engelberg, he told Forbes, saying that when the Guggenheim announced in May it would take the Sackler name down, he thought his wife’s “was a perfect name to be up there,” saying the “timing and the gift basically relates to the opportunity” to rename the education center.
He is a retired intellectual property lawyer who told Forbes he made his fortune in pharmaceutical patent litigation to put more generic drugs on the market by suing to “take away patents on drugs that never should have been granted in the first place.”
Gail Engelberg also serves as vice chair on the Lincoln Center’s board of jazz and a trustee of the Engelberg Foundation, which the couple launched to offer grants in social services, healthcare, education and Jewish organizations.
Alfred and Gail Engelberg attend the 2017 Guggenheim International Gala made possible by Dior on ... [+]
Key Background
The Guggenheim took down the Sackler name from its Center for Arts Education in May in agreement with the Mortimer D. Sackler family, the museum told Forbes in a statement, saying the decision was “in the best interest” of the institution. The Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation and The Sackler Trust announced in April the groups would work with any institution to “reassess its naming obligations to our family” to help make sure they “can pursue their missions without distraction or unwarranted pressure.” The Sacklers donated $9 million to the Guggenheim between 1995 and 2015, including $7 million for the education center, which opened in 2001. In 2019, the Guggenheim joined other major museums in announcing it would no longer accept funding from the family. In March, the Sacklers agreed to pay as much as $6 billion to settle lawsuits accusing their company Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, of contributing to the opioid crisis. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 500,000 Americans died of opioid doses between 1999 and 2019.
Surprising Fact
Not all Sackler family donations to museums have links to OxyContin. After Arthur Sackler, the eldest of the three Sackler brothers, died in 1987, his descendants sold his stake in the company to his brothers, Mortimer and Raymond. Purdue Pharma was incorporated in 1991 and released OxyContin five years later, and Arthur’s descendants did not benefit financially from the drug. The Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Brooklyn Museum’s Sackler Center for Feminist Art are named for Arthur Sackler and his descendants.
Big Number
$10.8 billion. That’s how much the Sackler family was worth in 2020, according to Forbes estimates.
Further Reading
Sacklers Agree To $6 Billion Settlement Of Opioid Litigation Involving Their Purdue Pharma (Forbes)
