Quote of the day: Nan Goldin
“I really feel it’s so important museums listen to their artists, rather than their philanthropists. What is the museum for? Art is transcendent and that makes it very, very dirty if they take the money; it’s failing the whole idea of a museum as a place to show art.”
Nan Goldin, The Observer via Frieze
This is an interesting and important article about the philanthropist Sackler family, of whom some members have made their fortune by selling a highly addictive pain killer. (I’ve resisting naming it here as this site has been hacked with the name of it in the past.) I heard the artist Nan Goldin talk about her own experience with addiction to this med in this NYT discussion a while ago. It’s an extremely interesting and sobering state of affairs.
In other news, The British Museum attracted hundreds of climate change activists last week in a protest against its partnership with BP oil.
If you love art, artists and galleries, these ethical protests will make you think…
WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGE: Nan Goldin
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27 February, 2019 @ 9:15 am
Raises many questions, not that I have any answers.
Who decides what will be in a public art museum when ‘philanthropic’ donations may or may not come with conditions? What are philanthropic donations when in certain jurisdictions they are a form of tax evasion?
As that well known graffiti tag states ‘Our pain is your profit’.
Thank you for raising this matter for consideration.
1 March, 2019 @ 8:18 am
Thanks Claire, appreciate the comment.