Two leading theatres have turned down funding from the Sackler Trust – including a £1m donation that had been offered to London’s Roundhouse – in the latest fallout from claims linking the Sackler family fortune to the US opioid drug crisis.
The Roundhouse was listed as having received the grant last year in company accounts filed early in October by the trust, but has now revealed that it decided not to take the money because it would distract from its work with young people.
Another institution, the Donmar Warehouse, told the Guardian on Thursday that it had decided to terminate a funding agreement to receive the rest of a £180,000 grant after an initial £60,000 instalment was received last December.
The developments came after the National Portrait Gallery earlier this year become the first major art institution to give up a grant from the Sackler family, in a move that campaigners hailed as a landmark victory in the battle over the ethics of arts funding.
Dame Theresa Sackler, the chair of the trust, subsequently announced that it would be temporarily suspending all new philanthropic giving, while continuing to honour existing commitments.
The move came after US activists had continued to step up pressure on galleries and museums funded by the Sacklers and after Theresa Sackler and other family members faced legal action in the US. Much of the wealth of some members of the family has come from one product: OxyContin, the prescription painkiller launched in 1996 that has been a major aggravator in the opioid crisis that is killing more than 100 people a day in the US.
In a statement first reported by The Stage, a spokesperson for the Roundhouse said: “We are enormously grateful for the trust’s support over the years, but we have made a decision not to accept the donation at this time. To do so risks distracting from our work with young people, and that’s our priority.”
Aside from the Roundhouse, the trust’s accounts for 2018 also stated that the next largest grants last year were allocated to the Young Vic (£375,000), the Old Vic (£350,000) and Chelsea and Westminster hospital (£250,000).
Other listed recipients included the Borne Foundation, which supports research to prevent premature births and was recorded as receiving a £150,000 grant.
A spokesperson for the Donmar Warehouse told the Guardian that it had received a three-year grant from the Sackler Trust in 2018 and had used a first instalment of £60,000 in December to complete a programme of educational activity that it had been committed to this year.
“We have not received any further funds from the trust since 2018. The Donmar board made a decision to terminate the funding agreement prior to the next instalment becoming due.”
In a statement issued earlier this year, Theresa Sackler said: “I am deeply saddened by the addiction crisis in America and support the actions Purdue Pharma is taking to help tackle the situation, whilst still rejecting the false allegations made against the company and several members of the Sackler family.
“The current press attention that these legal cases in the United States is generating has created immense pressure on the scientific, medical, educational and arts institutions here in the UK, large and small, that I am so proud to support. This attention is distracting them from the important work that they do.”
