Protesters Goal Guggenheim Over Museum’s Ties To Household At Heart Of Opioid Disaster

Protests erupted inside New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Saturday evening as demonstrators demanded the museum ditch its ties with the Sackler household ― the house owners of Purdue Pharma, producer and marketer of prescription painkiller OxyContin.

The museum’s Sackler Heart for Arts Training, which incorporates multimedia labs and lecture theatres sprawled out over 8,200-square ft, was a present from the household and opened to the general public in 2001.

Footage of the incident uploaded to Twitter present leaflets being thrown from one of many museum’s higher walkways as some protesters staged a die-in.

Designed to seem like prescription slips, the leaflets have been a response to allegations made in a court docket submitting {that a} member of the Sackler household had predicted the launch of the opioid painkiller could be “adopted by a blizzard of prescriptions that may bury the competitors.”

Oxycodone, the drug’s lively ingredient, is among the many most typical painkillers in prescription opioid deaths. Per the Related Press, Purdue Pharma, its executives and members of the Sackler household have been lately accused of deceiving sufferers and medical doctors in regards to the threat of opioids and allegedly pushed prescribers of the drug to maintain sufferers on it for longer.

The museum didn’t instantly reply to HuffPost’s request for touch upon the protests.

The newest demonstration comes after protesters focused the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork final 12 months for its ties to the household, tossing mock tablet bottles into the moat on the Temple of Dendur ― housed within the museum’s Sackler wing ― which have been labeled: “Prescribed to you by the Sackler Household.”

The New York Instances reviews that after leaving the Guggenheim, a number of of the protesters marched down Fifth Avenue with a barrier that learn “Disgrace on Sackler.”