Purdue Pharma Dissolved After Sackler Settlement, and Other News

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The Sackler family settles for $4.5 billion to address the deadly opioid epidemic.

Earlier this week, Purdue Pharma was dissolved after a protracted legal battle required the company’s owners, members of the Sackler family, to turn over billions of dollars to address the ongoing opioid epidemic fueled in large part by the prescription painkiller OxyContin. The ruling largely absolves the Sacklers from their company’s liability and, despite having to pay $4.5 billion dollars in damages, they remain one of the richest families in the United States. The Sacklers’ financial support of cultural institutions has been protested by vocal critics such as the artist Nan Goldin; a recent ruling even prohibited the family from any new naming rights in connection with charitable donations. Many institutions have de-emphasized the Sackler name as a result of the lawsuit, while others have declined gifts from the family outright. 

The Denver Art Museum receives $25 million to form a fashion and textiles institute.

An anonymous donor has gifted the Denver Art Museum upwards of $25 million to establish a new institute that focuses on textile art and fashion. Florence Müller, the museum’s Avenir Curator of Textile Art and Fashion, will lead up the department, which will allocate $15 million to scholarship and programming and the remaining $10 million to an endowment fund to support new acquisitions. “Fashion and textiles are exciting to me and our audiences because they’re so accessible,” Müller said in a statement. “This gift will enable us to build upon the museum’s great collections and tell more stories with them.” The department was seeded in 1927 after a Saltillo serape and Kashmir shawl were gifted, but wasn’t formally established until 1955. Under Müller’s leadership, the collection has grown to encompass more than 5,000 objects ranging from archaeological fabrics to avant-garde fiber works. 

Bjarke Ingels teams with an American billionaire to plan a utopian city of the future.

Dubbed Telosa, the built-from-scratch city will reside on a 150,000-acre site at an undetermined location in the U.S., and will reportedly be home to five million residents. Described by Ingels as open, fair, and inclusive, the grand vision for Telosa is bold: the development partners say it will set a global standard for urban living, while expanding human potential. “What if that land had been owned by a community endowment? What if you took that land appreciation and gave it back to the community since they created the value? At first glance it seems impossible to turn back the clock and have a do-over. The land was claimed, but there’s plenty of land left—what if we had a clean slate to demonstrate this new model?” says the website about the current land ownership model in the U.S. “We have a chance to prove a new model for society that offers people a higher quality of life and greater opportunity. When I look out 30 years from now, I imagine equitism serving as a blueprint for other cities—and even the world—and Telosa being a place of pride for all who live there.” If all goes according to plan, the first residents will move in around 2030.     

Apple gets approval from two states to accept its plan to digitize identification. 

The Apple Wallet has already digitized your credit cards, boarding passes, and subway tickets, and now it’s planning to add your driver’s license and state ID to the mix. Expected to roll out later this year, the iOS 15 update will have the capability to store your identification cards. The tech company, however, still needs the approval of the states. So far, Arizona and Georgia have given the green light, and Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma and Utah are expected to follow. While it remains unclear if every state will follow suit, one important entity has already approved the new technology: the TSA. 

Bang & Olufsen debut the first Cradle to Cradle consumer electronic device.

The actualization of sustainable design in the electronic industry remains optimistic as Bang & Olufsen’s novel portable Wi-Fi speaker, Beosound Level, has earned Cradle to Cradle Certified Bronze status. In order to meet the requirements of the certification, brands must satisfy criteria in the realms of renewable design, product circularity, and eco-conscious production techniques. Harnessing its 96-year history, the audio giant redesigned their product with a focus on longevity and modularity. “We’d like to show that consumer audio products can actually last way longer than the average industry timeline,” says senior global product manager Mads Kogsgaard Hansen. “With the certification, we’re adding circularity and even more transparency to our longevity promise, and we believe that’s the right way for us to show the industry there are different ways to create these kinds of products.”

A new initiative in L.A. will bring artworks by Black creatives to Crenshaw Boulevard.

Destination Crenshaw, a $100 million initiative that seeks to reinvigorate the corridor with more than 100 works by contemporary Black artists, is slated to kick off next fall. The project’s inception in 2017 followed the sanction of a light rail that threatened to displace existing green spaces and to interrupt local businesses. The initiative will display works by the likes of Kehinde Wiley and Alison Saar among five other Black artists who have a personal stake in the symbolic Black corridor. “We are committed to creating a permanent place for Black people in Los Angeles,” says Destination Crenshaw’s president and chief operating officer Jason W. Foster.’ We look forward to strengthening the connection between the community and these exceptional artists, all of whom have been, in some way, nurtured and inspired by the Crenshaw neighborhood.”

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