American artist Nan Goldin’s campaign group has urged the Royal Naval College in Greenwich to take down the tainted Sackler name from the newly renovated building it has unveiled this weekend and to refuse money from “this ghoulish clan” in future. Two branches of the wealthy family are behind the production of the controversial addictive opioid painkiller, OxyContin.

Speaking to the Observer on Saturday, Goldin’s fellow activist, LA Kauffman said the public would judge the museum harshly if it failed to act. “The tide has definitively turned against the Sackler family, and it won’t be long before every institution that has ever taken funding from them and celebrated their name will consider it a great error and stain on their reputation,” she said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Artist Nan Goldin. Photograph: Yana Paskova/The Guardian

Last month, Goldin told the Observer that a mooted retrospective display of her work at London’s National Portrait Gallery could not go ahead if it continued to receive support from the Sacklers. Following Goldin’s stand, the gallery said last week it had jointly agreed with the family that it would “not proceed at this time” with a £1m donation from the philanthropic trust fund accumulated through trade in the drug.

The Tate reacted to the NPG’s change of position on Sackler money by also deciding it will no longer seek funding or sponsorship from the owners of Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. The South London Gallery has also returned a £125,000 gift from a Sackler foundation. With bad timing, this weekend the naval museum, another London beneficiary of the implicated branch of Sacklers, has reopened its celebrated Painted Hall after two years of renovations, largely paid for by a Heritage Lottery Fund grant. The newly restored “undercroft” space will, however, also house the Sackler Gallery.

“While our group will not be there in person at the reopening at the Old Royal Naval College, the force of the world’s moral disapproval will be – no institution with any integrity should take money from this ghoulish clan, who are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people,” said Kauffman, a key member of Goldin’s campaign group Pain (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now).

A spokesperson for the Greenwich museums told the Observer: “The Sackler Trust’s last donation to Royal Museums Greenwich was received in March 2018 and no additional applications are planned.” The historic museum complex on the south bank of the Thames “accepts sponsorship from external sources, provided they are compatible with RMG’s aims and objectives, and do not impose or imply conditions that limit the museum’s curatorial integrity”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Tate has decided not to pursue further funding from Purdue Pharma. Photograph: Atlantide Phototravel/Getty Images

Goldin plans to stage a protest at another leading London venue in the near future to shame it into refusing cash from the family. The art photographer, who won acclaim with her book and photo-show, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, in 1986, later became addicted to OxyContin after an injury.

Goldin is due to have a year-long exhibition at Tate Modern in April. Should Tate have stayed open to Sackler money, she was ready to mount protests at the exhibition opening but she said on Thursday she was now “so happy” it would not be necessary. Like other actions staged by Goldin it would potentially have seen a banner dropped into the Turbine Hall, also showering the space with thousands of fake prescriptions for OxyContin and fake pill bottles.

Nan Goldin threatens London gallery boycott over £1m gift from Sackler fund Read more

Almost two years ago, the Victoria and Albert Museum opened a £2m Sackler Courtyard redevelopment. This weekend, the V&A confirmed to the Observer it is “not considering removing any signage”. The executive board of the museum and its board of trustees make decisions jointly on gift acceptance and are due to meet at the end of the month.

Many other major British arts institutions, including the National Theatre, the Royal College of Art, Royal Opera House, Shakespeare’s Globe, British Museum, Bodleiean Library in Oxford and the Serpentine Gallery, have wings or galleries named after the family, which has three branches. The descendants of the late Arthur Sackler are not implicated in the trail of addiction attributed to OxyContin. He sold his part of the business to brothers Mortimer and Raymond before the drug was developed and it is his money that, for instance, funded the gallery at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Entrance to the Serpentine’s Sackler Gallery. Photograph: Andrew Aitchison/Getty Images

Sir Christopher Frayling, a former rector of the Royal College of Art, which received Sackler funds after his tenure, said that tainted donations had become “a big, big issue”.

“The problem is that the only rich organisations who really want to give to the arts are those with an image problem,” he said, referring to the process of “art-washing” or “reputation laundering”.

The decision to turn down cash was easy, said Frayling, the chair of Arts Council England between 2005 to 2009, when it came from “a tobacco company or a tyrannical regime”. “But it is very difficult to lay down principles more generally,” he added, pointing out that the Renaissance was funded by the Medici family.

As state funding has dropped to around a third of income for many major British cultural institutions, the problem has grown, he said. Organisations now offer “naming rights” for new buildings or galleries to corporate or philanthropic sponsors on a “tariff menu” he said: “In the 1970s naming rights used to be assumed to be in perpetuity. Now it is often arranged over five year chunks.”