Sacklers Banned From Lending Their Name to Museums, and Other News

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As part of a settlement, the Sackler family can’t lend its name to museums for nine years.

The controversial Purdue Pharma settlement over the painkiller OxyContin is one step closer to being finalized, and the Sackler family, which owns the company, will contribute an additional $50 million to a $4.5 billion settlement fund that will be paid out over the next nine years. Though critics hoped to see the family more severely punished for their role perpetuating the opioid crisis, which has killed more than 500,000 Americans in the past 20 years, the family will be prohibited from permitting any new naming rights in connection with charitable donations over that time period. Many cultural institutions, including the Serpentine Galleries, have de-emphasized the Sackler name as a result of the lawsuit, while others have declined gifts from the Sackler family outright. 

A lawsuit seeking to halt controversial rezoning in SoHo and NoHo, New York, gets tossed. 

The controversial effort to rezone a portion of SoHo and NoHo, New York, just cleared a major hurdle. A recent lawsuit accused the city of failing to give legally required information about its intent to certify the rezoning application, which makes up the first step of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), 30 days before doing so. Judge Arthur Engoron tossed the lawsuit, concluding that the de Blasio administration provided adequate notice that it was launching the process. The rezoning paves the way for two million square feet of new residential space, a percentage of which would be marked as affordable. Opponents argue that the proposal offers giveaways to developers, who will only create more large-scale luxury apartments that would strip the neighborhoods of their character. 

Venues across London recently staged a series of performance art that’s all for sale.

Collectible performance artwork might seem like a novel concept, but a new program seeks to bring that type of artwork to the global stage. Performance Exchange, which was held in London from July 9 to 11, aimed to give collectors a better understanding of what it means to own a piece of performance art. “What the market supports and what artists make doesn’t particularly match up at the moment,”  Performance Exchange’s founder and curator Rose Lejeune tells The Art Newspaper. “This is an intervention. Performance is more than marketing or an entertaining side act—it is a legitimate, collectible art form.”

The Chicago Architecture Center is planning a show dedicated to the late Helmut Jahn.

The architecture community expressed shock and disbelief when Helmut Jahn, 81, was struck and killed while riding his bicycle near his home in the Chicago suburbs. Later this month, the Chicago Architecture Center (CAC) will open an exhibition at the center’s Drake Family Skyscraper Gallery that recognizes the German-born architect’s indelible impact on his adopted home of Chicago and beyond. Called “Helmut Jahn: Life + Architecture” and on view through October, the show will feature a number of scale building models of such career-defining designs as the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago and the Sony Center in Berlin. “Helmut’s larger-than-life persona and his inventive and surprisingly original buildings remade Chicago in the 1980s,” Lynn Osmond, president and CEO of the CAC, said in a statement. “His brash designs and relentless pursuit of excellence invigorated Chicago, helping the architectural community move confidently beyond mid-century modernism.” The show opens July 23.

The Black Artists + Designers Guild is offering four $5,000 grants to Black design students.

The nonprofit organization Black Artists + Designers Guild (BADG) has launched the Creative Futures Grant, which provides monetary support and mentorship to Black-identifying third and fourth-year undergraduate and graduate students studying visual arts, interior design, or architecture. A jury of art and design professionals will select four applicants, each of whom will receive $5,000 and mentorship with BADG makers, one-on-one meetings with professionals, and inclusion within BADG’s online archives. “This grant provides the space and support to create projects that Black students in the arts may want to do but are not necessarily supported to create at their educational institutions,” says BADG founder Malene Barnett. Applications will be accepted through July 26; winners will be announced in the fall.

Today’s attractive distractions:

This new app saves and distributes leftovers from San Francisco restaurants. 

Nike’s Move to Zero campaign narrows in on cork as a sustainable material.

Experts are exploring how AI might keep people “alive” after they’ve passed.

An enormous, multisensory digital whale will make a splash in Times Square.