G. Wayne Miller
The Sackler name is on world-renowned museums and elite-university programs.But except for their philanthropy, the Sacklers have mostly remained private.
That may soon change.
Sackler family members own multibillion-dollar OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma and its Rhode Island subsidiary, Rhodes Pharmaceuticals in Coventry, scene of a Feb. 7 protest against the firm’s role in the opioid epidemic.
Already the subject of numerous lawsuits concerning their role in opioid overdoses and deaths, Purdue and its principals were further exposed last month when Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey filed a 274-page brief that names a Sackler 1,120 times. As the Massachusetts suit proceeds along with others, including one filed last year by the Rhode Island attorney general, it is expected that prosecutors using the power of the court will learn more than family members ever expected to be revealed.
The Sacklers have granted few interviews over the years, even though their extensive donations have popularized their name. There is the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard; the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts; and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Institute for Biological, Physical and Engineering Sciences at Yale.
Washington has The Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, New York City the Sackler Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Sackler Center for Arts Education at the Guggenheim. There is the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London, and in Paris, the Sackler Wing of Oriental Antiquities at the Louvre.
And that’s the short list.
So who are the Sacklers?
The Providence Journal attempted to learn directly, by sending a request to interview family members to Purdue Pharma, headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. Bob Josephson, Purdue’s executive director, communications, emailed back that “we only represent the company and not the Sackler family.” Subsequent efforts to reach family members were unsuccessful.
Josephson did, however, send a statement the company issued after the Massachusetts complaint. It read, in part: “Purdue Pharma denies the allegations in the complaint filed by the Attorney General, and the company and individual defendants will continue to defend themselves against these misleading and deliberately inflammatory allegations. In the meantime, Purdue continues to fight for balance in the public discourse so that society can simultaneously help pain patients in need and create real solutions to the complex problem of addiction.”
But obituaries and other stories published by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The New York Times and other publications — along with information found in Healey’s Massachusetts brief and other suits — provide a degree of insight into family members, starting with the three brothers, all dead now,who began the business.
— Arthur Sackler, died in 1987
Psychiatrist and brother of Raymond and Mortimer Sackler, he held an option in Purdue Pharma that his estate sold to his brothers after his death. Arthur had four children, who have no role in Purdue today; his third wife, Jillian Sackler, spoke publicly last year to the British newspaper The Guardian. Purdue has an international arm known as Mundipharma that operates in Britain.
“She said that the other branches of the family 'have a moral duty to help make this right and to atone for any mistakes made, in relation to the opioid crisis,'” The Guardian reported. According to the paper, a “fissure” exists between Arthur Sackler’s wife and descendants and other branches of the family.
— Mortimer Sackler, died in 2010.
Psychiatrist co-founder of what today is known as Purdue Pharma. Of his seven children, three are or have been board members of Purdue Pharma: Ilene Sackler Lefcourt, Kathe Sackler and Mortimer David Alfons Sackler.
Ilene Sackler Lefcourt, according to The New York Times, lives in Manhattan and is an honorary trustee of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Kathe Sackler is founder and president of The Acorn Foundation for the Arts & Sciences, a member of Columbia University Medical Center’s Board of Visitors, and belongs to the board of governors of The New York Academy of Sciences, among other positions, according to the academy’s profile of her.
Mortimer David Alfons Sackler has been occasionally photographed with his wife, Jacqueline, at charity events for the Guggenheim, a search of the Getty Images archives reveals.
— Raymond Sackler, died in 2017.
Purdue co-founder, psychiatrist and brother of Mortimer Sackler. His two children, Jonathan Sackler and Richard Sackler, and Richard’s son, David Sackler, are or have been board members of Purdue Pharma.
Jonathan Sackler lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, and is a substantial contributor to Republican and Democrat politicians, according to a recent report by The Hartford Courant.
Richard Sackler, president of Purdue from 1999 to 2003, now lives in Austin, Texas, “in a modern hilltop mansion on the outskirts of the city, in an area favored by tech entrepreneurs” and is a continuing Yale benefactor and “an enigmatic, slightly awkward man,” according to The New Yorker, which despite attempts was unable to arrange an interview with him.
David Sackler and his wife, Joss, are "fixtures in New York charity and fashion circles," according to The Guardian; Joss describes herself on a website she controls, lbvofficial.com,as"the creator of LBV, a private women's social+culture club based in NY."Her Instagram account has more than 68,000 followers.
In its 2016 list of America’s 25 richest families, Forbes ranked the Sacklers at number 19, with a net worth of $13 billion.
Once associated mostly with generous philanthropy, the Sackler name is now the object of mounting protests. In the wake of January’s filing by Massachusetts Attorney General Healey, Somerville mayor Joseph A. Curtatone urged Harvard and Tufts to rethink policy.
“As a @Harvard graduate and Mayor of a city that’s home to @TuftsUniversity, I think there needs to be a serious discussion about removing the Sackler name from those campuses given the revelations coming from @MassAGO about how #OxyContin was pushed in our state,” Curtatone wrote in a tweet.
The Smithsonian has been picketed. Protestors have left OxyContin pill bottles outside Purdue’s Connecticut headquarters. A Connecticut state senator, Will Haskell, co-chair of the Higher Education panel, has called for new scrutiny of the millions the University of Connecticut has accepted from Sacklers. And the list goes on.
“The Sackler name is becoming synonymous with the opioid epidemic, and it is damning for these institutions to have their name up,” Nan Goldin, a photographer whose work has been shown at Harvard and the Metropolitan Museum of Art told the Associated Press after leading protests at the Ivy League school and the Met.
In an interview last year with The Guardian, Goldin, who lives in New York, spoke of her decision to protest the Sackler name. It began, she said, during recovery from addiction to a drug she had been prescribed in 2014 to treat pain from tendinitis.
The drug was OxyContin.
— gwmiller@providencejournal.com
(401) 277-7380
On Twitter: @GWayneMiller
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