As onlookers watched, protesters brandished black banners with the phrases “Shame on Sackler” and “Fund Rehab” and hurled yellow pill bottles with white labels that read “OxyContin” and “prescribed to you by the Sacklers” into the wing’s reflecting pool.

Ms. Goldin announced a series of demands in the form of short statements, including “harm reduction” and “treatment,” that were repeated loudly by the crowd.

“We are artists, activists, addicts,” she shouted. “We are fed up.”

Ms. Goldin — whose intimate photographs documenting drug use, violence and deaths from AIDS are displayed in numerous museums, including the Metropolitan — started an anti-opioid group called Prescription Addiction Intervention Now, or PAIN, after being addicted to OxyContin from 2014 to 2017. She has called withdrawal from OxyContin the darkest experience of her life.

A spokesman for the museum declined to comment, and a spokeswoman for the Sackler family did not respond to a request for comment. A Purdue spokesman, Robert Josephson, said the company is “deeply troubled by the prescription and illicit opioid abuse crisis” and is dedicated to helping solve it by paying for prescription-drug monitoring programs and collaborating with law enforcement.

OxyContin has accounted for tens of billions of dollars in sales since entering the market in 1996.

In 2007, Purdue’s parent company pleaded guilty to a federal felony charge of misbranding the drug, which prosecutors said was marketed as less addictive, less subject to abuse and less likely to cause withdrawal than other painkillers. Since then, states have accused Purdue in lawsuits of misrepresenting the risks and benefits of OxyContin, allegations the company has denied.