, the 68-year-old photographer who was prescribed Oxycontin, quickly became addicted to it, found recovery through a replacement drug and then threw her energies into calling the Sacklers to account. Goldin became the most public face of the campaigning group PAIN, leading the charge into museums with Sackler wings, Sackler rooms and Sackler money to shame their well-heeled executives into cutting those ties.
Less known was Goldin’s own story which, as she tells it here, was grounded in a childhood of arid affluence. Her older sister Barbara cared for her, giving her the hugs, love and stories that were beyond her prim mother, until she was diagnosed as mentally ill and, in her early teens, sent to an orphanage. A couple of years later, she committed suicide. Barbara was a rebel at heart, says Goldin. “She just didn’t have the power to go into full-blown rebellion, the way I did.
Everyone involved in PAIN, the Oxycontin survivors’ campaign for redress, knows how crucial it is that one of the most recognized names in the contemporary art world is seen to be at the forefront of a battle within that world. It isn’t the war, which they would feel had been won if the Sacklers were in jail, but winning the battle is certainly something. One by one, the museums they target announce they won’t be taking the Sacklers’ tainted money any more.