Artist Nan Goldin welcomes move, which comes after firm’s alleged role in US opioid crisis
The National Portrait Gallery has become the first major art institution to give up a grant from the controversial Sackler family, in a move that campaigners said was a landmark victory in the battle over the ethics of arts funding.
In a decision hailed as “a powerful acknowledgment” that some sources of income could not be justified, a spokesperson for the gallery said it had “jointly agreed” that it would “not proceed at this time” with a £1m donation from the family, whose US pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma LP makes the highly-addictive opioid prescription painkiller OxyContin.