Elizabeth Ann Sackler (born February 19, 1948) is a public historian, arts activist, and the daughter of Arthur M. Sackler. She is the founder of the American Indian Ritual Object Repatriation Foundation and the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown ...

Early life and education

In 1966, Sackler graduated from New Lincoln School, an experimental private high school in New York City, where she became in involved in activism. In 1997, Sackler received her PhD with a concentration in public history from Union Institute & University.

Career

Early work

In 1992, Sackler became frustrated with Sotheby's refusal to repatriate Native American ceremonial masks, so she purchased them and returned them to their tribes of origin. This led her to become interested in art and social justice issues for American Indians, which led her to become the founding president of the American Indian Ritual Object Repatriation Foundation. She is also President of The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation and the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation.

Brooklyn Museum

In 2007, she founded the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the first museum center devoted to female artists and

feminist art Feminist art is a category of art associated with the late 1960s and 1970s feminist movement. Feminist art highlights the societal and political differences women experience within their lives. The hopeful gain from this form of art is to bri ...

, located at the Brooklyn Museum. A centerpiece of the center's collection is

Judy Chicago Judy Chicago (born Judith Sylvia Cohen; July 20, 1939) is an American feminist artist, art educator, and writer known for her large collaborative art installation pieces about birth and creation images, which examine the role of women in history ...

's installation of her work, ''

The Dinner Party ''The Dinner Party'' is an installation artwork by feminist artist Judy Chicago. Widely regarded as the first epic feminist artwork, it functions as a symbolic history of women in civilization. There are 39 elaborate place settings on a triangul ...

,'' which is located at the Brooklyn Museum. Sackler and Chicago had been friends since the 1970s. In June 2014, Sackler became the first woman to be elected Chairman by the Brooklyn Museum Board of Trustees, a position she held until June 2016. She has served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Brooklyn Museum since 2000. More recently, Sackler's work has focused on issues related to women in prison, including the program series ''States of Denial: The Illegal Incarceration of Women, Children, and People of Color'' as well as the exhibition ''Women of York: Shared Dining'', both at the Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

Family

Sackler was born in New York City to Arthur M. Sackler, psychiatrist, entrepreneur and philanthropist and Else Jorgensen, from Denmark. Sackler is a mother of two children.

Controversy

In October 2017, ''Esquire'' and ''The New Yorker'' published critical articles outlining connections among Purdue Pharma, the larger Sackler family and Oxycontin's role in the opioid crisis. In response, Elizabeth Sackler claimed that neither she, nor her children, “benefited in any way” from the sale of Oxycontin or ever held shares in Purdue Pharma. Articles confirmed that her father's option in a different pharmaceutical company, Purdue Frederick, were sold shortly after his death in 1987, to Purdue Pharma owners Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, years before the advent of Oxycontin. Online outlet Hyperallergic reviewed legal documents confirming her statement and later articles in the New York Times, Associated Press, and other outlets published clarifications and corrections all confirming her branch of the family's separation from Purdue Pharma and all Oxycontin profits. Elizabeth Sackler said she admired Nan Goldin and all activists seeking to hold Purdue accountable for "morally abhorrent" behavior. In response, Goldin noted that Elizabeth's father, Arthur, earned his fortune in significant part through marketing of tranquilizers, including

Valium Diazepam, first marketed as Valium, is a medicine of the benzodiazepine family that acts as an anxiolytic. It is commonly used to treat a range of conditions, including anxiety, seizures, alcohol withdrawal syndrome, muscle spasms, insomnia, ...

, that were widely abused. "We have heard repeatedly from Arthur’s widow, Dame Jillian Sackler, and Elizabeth that because Arthur died before the existence of Oxycontin, they didn’t benefit from it. But he was the architect of the advertising model used so effectively to push the drug. He also turned Valium into the first million-dollar drug," Goldin said in 2018. "The whole Sackler clan is evil," she added. Goldin's claims regarding the connection between Arthur Sackler's legacy and the opioid crisis in the United States have been echoed by some researchers and academics. Former ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' journalist Barry Meier wrote in his book ''Pain Killer'' that Arthur Sackler "helped pioneer some of the most controversial and troubling practices in medicine: the showering of favors on doctors, the lavish spending on consultants and experts ready to back a drugmaker’s claims, the funding of supposedly independent commercial interest groups, the creation of publications to serve as industry mouthpieces, and the outright exploitation of scientific research for marketing purposes." Psychiatrist Allen Frances told ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issue ...

'' in 2017 that “ st of the questionable practices that propelled the pharmaceutical industry into the scourge it is today can be attributed to Arthur Sackler.”

Honors and awards

* 1994: Native American Film and Video Celebration, Lincoln Center (New York, NY), Honorary Award, Executive Producer ''Life Spirit'' * 1998: The Union Institute (Cincinnati, OH), Sussman Award for Academic Excellence * 1999: Yurok Tribal Council (Eureka, CA), Honor * 2002:

(Brooklyn, NY), Community Committee's Women in the Arts Award * 2003: Women’s eNews (New York, NY), 21 Leaders of the 21st Century Award * 2004: Women’s Caucus for Art (Seattle, WA), President’s Award * 2005: Drums Along The Hudson (New York, NY), Native American of the Year * 2006: ArtTable Award, Distinguished Service to the Visual Arts * 2007: Moore College of Art, Visionary Woman Award. * 2015: Studio Arts College International (SACI), Honorary MFA degree

Memberships and leadership

* National Council on Public History, Member *

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 100 ...

, Fellow for Life *

Institute of American Indian Arts Museum The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is a public tribal land-grant college in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The college focuses on Native American art. It operates the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), which is housed in the historic S ...

(Santa Fe, NM), Founder’s Circle * 1987–present: The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation (New York, NY), CEO * 1992–present: American Indian Ritual Object Repatriation Foundation (New York, NY), Founder and President * 1995–1999:

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

(Washington, D.C.), Founding President, Friends of the Freer and Sackler Galleries * 2000–present:

National Museum of Women in the Arts The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), located in Washington, D.C., is "the first museum in the world solely dedicated" to championing women through the arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Since ope ...

(Washington, D.C.), National Advisory Board * 2000–2018:

(Brooklyn, NY), Board of Trustees, Collections Committee, Executive Committee ** 2014–2016: Chairman, Board of Trustees. * 2001–present: Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation (New York, NY), President * 2001–2006: New Mexico Statuary Hall Foundation, Office of Indian Affairs (Santa Fe, NM), Board Member for the National Statuary Hall Collection, Washington, D.C.

Works and publications

References

External links

* *
Elizabeth Sackler
at

Elizabeth Sackler
at American Indian Ritual Object Repatriation Foundation
Elizabeth A. Sackler papers
at the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Special Collections {{DEFAULTSORT:Sackler, Elizabeth 1948 births Living people Activists from New York City Writers from New York City Union Institute & University alumni Philanthropists from New York (state) American feminists American people of Danish descent American people of Polish-Jewish descent Jewish American philanthropists Sackler family