Okay, when are they going to get started on the Guggenheim family? One of the sources of wealth that paid for that collection and for the building were the family’s mining and rubber concerns in the Congo Free State, Leopold II’s private country in Africa that operated like a giant slave labor camp. Both Americans and Europeans of the early 1900s expressed shock at what went on there, and the Belgian government seized it from their king. It’s only a matter of time before some hothead with a keyboard reads a Wikipedia article and finds that out.

The underground Sackler Museum on the Mall in DC is wonderful (It has a garden on the surface), but gets missed by most tourists since you can’t see the building. The collection of Asian art is exquisite and one of a kind, and much of it came from Arthur Sackler’s personal collection. Is this whole renaming idea a need to show that there wasn’t anything good about the man, and that the protesters are better somehow? He was a practicing psychiatrist and a student of Sigmund Freud who helped get NYC blood banks integrated, and tried to replace shock treatment with medication before he went into business in advertising. He built a fantastic museum and basically gave it to the country, no matter what his faults were. People are complicated, and the more accomplished they are the more complicated they get. Renaming these museums will not do a thing to alleviate the opiate addiction crisis in this country.