20 LEGAL BUT SOMEHOW “SHIFTY”

Lost in the flood of good news about Valium and Librium were the first warning signs of problems with the drugs. It came in a final report in late 1963 from the President’s Advisory Commission on Narcotic and Drug Abuse.1 It seemed an unlikely forum to address the benzos since JFK had created the seven-person panel in January to study ways “to prevent abuse of narcotic and non-narcotic drugs.” Its focus was amphetamine and barbiturate abuse, both of which had been the subject of alarming FDA warnings. Half the enormous annual pharmaceutical amphetamine production found its way to the illegal market.2 News accounts demonized amphetamine “thrill pills” as the culprit for everything from increased road accidents for long-haul truckers to broken homes, porn and prostitution, and juvenile crime.3 A sharp spike in overdose deaths was blamed on barbiturates (Marilyn Monroe’s accidental overdose the previous year had made the topic a front-page story).

As part of its mandate, the Advisory Commission tackled the complicated issue of addiction. Scientists could not agree in the early 1960s about what qualified as drug addiction. There was a debate about differences between habituation, psychological, physiological, and physical dependence.4 Adding to the challenge, only three of the prominent and well-connected directors had medical backgrounds.I5

The commission’s report was due sometime in November. Arthur Sackler and Roche knew it had gathered anecdotal information that Miltown and Librium might cause dependence. Few thought it had compiled enough evidence to make any firm conclusions about the so-called minor tranquilizers. Still, Sackler was on call in case the report included anything that needed to be rebutted about Roche’s benzo.

Arthur hoped that the commission report might not be released until December, as he wanted to tend first to a personal matter. Sackler had devised a deal he wanted to make with New York’s premier museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was common knowledge among New York art collectors and philanthropists that following the 1960–61 recession, the Metropolitan had a tough time raising money for a major renovation of its outdated galleries. Arthur had set a meeting with James Rorimer, the museum’s director.

Sackler was not the type of mega-collector the Met usually courted. It concentrated on master Renaissance and Postimpressionist paintings and sculptures. The only museum to which Sackler had then given any of his artifacts was Phoenix’s Art Museum a few months after it opened in 1959. His partial underwriting of a Laboratory of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia got him an appointment to an advisory panel in the art department. Sackler was conspicuously absent for any major grant to the nation’s top museums, the Met, as well as its rivals, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Chicago’s Art Institute, and the Smithsonian and National Gallery in D.C.

The New York art world—dominated then by WASPs with patrician family ties that often traced their wealth to the Industrial Revolution—sneered at Sackler as a nouveau riche wannabe-patron. Robert Lehman, the banker who ran Lehman Brothers and himself a major art collector and contributor to the Metropolitan, considered the Met Trustees “an anti-Semitic club.”6 They noted Sackler had started assembling his Chinese antiquities in the late 1940s, when Asian art was out of style. The hard-line communist crackdown on arts and culture had tempered enthusiasm for the entire field.7 A major reason the market for Chinese collectibles was depressed was not only that it was illegal for Americans to do business with the mainland, but the communist leadership had banned all sales and exports to the West.8 Sackler used middlemen to acquire the artifacts he secretly purchased in communist China and stored them at the German factory of Dr. Kade Pharmaceutical, the company Marietta had inherited.9 II 10

“To those who respected him, he was shrewd,” said Thomas Hoving, later the director of the Met. “To those who detested him and his practices, he was slippery. And slippery was how he was regarded at the Met.”11 Maybe, some wondered, instead of possessing an intrinsic sense of style and culture, Sackler had chosen Asian art because he was a bargain hunter simply looking for the cheapest collectibles.12 It was also well known among New York collectors that Arthur relied often on the advice of Dr. Paul Singer, a Hungarian-born, Vienna-schooled psychiatrist and self-taught Asian art authority.13 He was the perfect complement to Arthur’s focus on grand and much sought-after collectibles. Singer focused instead on rare, small archaeological objects found in digs throughout Asia and bypassed by dealers. He called them “the things that looters left behind.”14

The two had psychiatric backgrounds and Judaism in common, and while neither had been to China nor spoke the language, they shared a passion for Chinese art.15 Since 1957, when they first met, Sackler paid for the rent on Singer’s Summit, New Jersey, apartment, a two-bedroom that was crammed floor to ceiling with antiques. Arthur also agreed to a monthly consulting fee as well as to secure off-site storage if Singer needed space for new acquisitions, all of which Sackler underwrote. The agreement allowed Singer to concentrate on hunting for artifacts without the pressures of fretting about how he might pay his monthly bills. Singer had no desire to display his collection in a museum, get a tax deduction, or see his name on a gallery that housed his collection. He agreed, meanwhile, that whatever he accumulated during his lifetime would pass to Sackler upon his death (when Singer died in 1997, his six-thousand-object collection was worth $60 million).16

Wen Fong, the chair of Princeton’s Department of Art and Archaeology, and a consultant later to Sackler, wrote to a fellow art professor at Berkeley that Arthur’s naked ambition meant he spent too little time on research and too much on simply accumulating.17 “There’s the danger of being tabbed as greedy or even vulgar,” said the Met’s Hoving.18

Notwithstanding the elitist snobbery that dismissed him as an unwanted interloper at the Met, Arthur wanted to put his plan into effect before he was consumed by defending Valium and Librium in the pending report from JFK’s Advisory Commission on Narcotic and Drug Abuse. As far as Arthur was concerned, whatever the museum, any proposal from a potential donor was all about business. Did the museum want what he had to offer and what was it willing to give in return? The Met’s financial pinch—the latest fundraising campaign had not even raised enough to complete its much needed air-conditioning—was a rare opportunity for Sackler to move from being a benefactor of second-tier museums like the Phoenix to becoming a patron at the fabled Metropolitan. He also knew that no matter how much the gossip inside the Met disparaged his collection, it was widely acknowledged that Far Eastern art was one of the museum’s weakest holdings. “The Met sank enormous sums of money into Chinese paintings,” said Professor Roy Andrew Miller, “that would have disgraced the collection of a chop suey shop.”19

Earlier in the year the Sacklers had begun making contributions to the Met (1963 would be the first year they were listed in the museum’s year-end published tribute titled “Donors and Lenders”).III Sackler assured the Metropolitan’s director, James Rorimer, that he was successfully encouraging unnamed professionals he knew to become Met donors for the first time. By reviewing the museum’s annual published lists of “Donors and Lenders” since 1960, and then comparing the names to the corporate legal filings for the companies in which the Sacklers held overt or hidden interests, the author identified Sackler’s “professionals.” In 1963, the first time the Sacklers were listed, others in “Donors of Money & Securities” were Martin Greene, Myron J. Greene, and Louis Goldburt. Myron Greene was also a “Fellow for Life” (minimum contribution of $5,000). All three were also on the 1964 compilation for gifts of “money and securities” and the Greenes were “Fellows in Perpetuity” (minimum of $20,000 each). Joining them was Lawrence Effman, an accountant who worked for Goldburt.20

The Brooklyn-born Greenes were brothers and attorneys who had represented the three Sackler brothers since 1947 when they incorporated the Sackler Foundation. They were listed as shareholders and directors of some early Sackler companies. Louis Goldburt, a Brooklyn-born accountant, together with Effman, did the payroll. Goldburt was also listed sometimes as a shareholder and he had helped conceal the Sacklers’ ownership in the Washington Institute, the company to which Martí-Ibáñez and MD Publications paid $420,000 in annual consulting fees.21 As for Effman, he was later listed on private ventures with Bill Frohlich and also served as a director for Frohlich’s advertising agency.

It appears the Greenes, Goldburt, and Effman qualified for the Met’s top-tier list by donating shares of privately held, Sackler-controlled companies. The Greenes, as attorneys, vouched for the legitimacy of the companies, and Goldburt and Effman, as the accountants, for the value of any gifted shares.22 (The author was unable to determine whether the contributions were at inflated values—something that would have offset income for the Sackler companies while enhancing the family name at the Met—since the museum repeatedly refused the author’s requests for details about the gifts).

Arthur knew, however, that money alone was not enough to get what he wanted from the Met. In his meeting with Rorimer, he spoke at length about his collection and how he envisioned it would be grander over time. They talked about a New York Times clipping from when Sackler had loaned some of his artifacts for the Columbia University exhibit.23

Having whet Rorimer’s appetite, he moved to a new topic. Sackler surprised him by offering $150,000.24 The money was for a complete renovation of a grand gallery on the second floor, just north of the Great Hall. The refurbished hall would house Chinese antiquities and be named the Arthur Sackler Gallery (in fifteen years it would be part of nine adjoining galleries under the Sackler Wing). Rorimer realized that Sackler had done his homework. The space he had selected had no formal name but was unofficially called the Rogers Hall. That was because most of the collectibles on display there had been acquired by the Met as a result of one of its largest ever death bequests, $5 million in 1901 from railroad tycoon Jacob Rogers ($152 million in 2019). Rogers had directed the money be used for the “purchase of rare and desirable art objects and books for the library.”25 When banker J. P. Morgan became the Met’s president three years later, he used the Rogers Fund to acquire a superb and diverse collection of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian antiquities; some Far Eastern objects; illuminated manuscripts; and seventeenth-century paintings by Dutch masters.26

Agreeing to naming rights for the $150,000 was the easy part. Sackler then raised another condition, one he considered creative and that struck Rorimer as unorthodox at best. Arthur had identified the Met’s best Chinese sculptures and also a superb early wall painting. The museum had used the Rogers Fund to acquire them in the 1920s. Sackler insisted his entire gift depended on the Met selling him that art at the prices it had originally paid decades earlier. He would then “gift them back” to the museum. They would not even leave the Met. They would be displayed with the credit “Gifts of Arthur Sackler” instead of the existing “The Rogers Fund.”27 Rorimer did not take long to agree. He assured Arthur the museum would prepare quickly the paperwork for the “Dr. Arthur Sackler Gallery.”28 (Arthur later changed the credit on the great wall painting at the entrance to his gallery as a gift to the museum from his parents.)

It is not clear whether Rorimer knew that Sackler intended to take charitable tax deductions based on the current value of the fine artworks he bought from the Met. Thomas Hoving, the Met’s future director, believed that Sackler “had figured that he would actually make money on the tax loophole he discovered—his deduction would be far more than the costs of the works and his donation.”29 Rorimer was desperate for the money and later complained to some colleagues the deal was “the biggest giveaway scandal in the history of the museum.”30

Sackler came back later with a new request.31 He let Rorimer know that in addition to the $150,000 bequest, the family was increasing its donations to the Met. Arthur and Marietta, as well as Sackler’s first wife, Else, would qualify for inclusion as significant donors of “money and securities.” “The Sackler Collection” would be listed as a “Lender of Objects of Art.” And Arthur was on his way to be one of twenty-two “Benefactors,” while Marietta and Else were separately listed as “Fellows in Perpetuity.” Having laid the groundwork for the largesse, Arthur then presented his unusual idea. “He asked for a storeroom inside the museum to house his private collections, a rent-free space to which only he and his personal curator would have access,” said Joseph Noble, the museum’s administrative director.32 In that enclave Sackler’s curators would undertake the enormous task of cataloging the thousands of pieces in his collection.

Rorimer was initially hesitant but after a few days had decided it might benefit the Met as well as Sackler. The unprecedented arrangement might encourage Arthur to donate his Chinese collection one day to the Met. If Sackler’s collection was stored at the museum, it would not be a great stretch to move it from that storeroom to permanent display in a Met gallery.33 Arthur was noncommittal. He was smart enough, however, to say that if he could have the storeroom, everything was open to discussion.

The final deal involved a bit more than “a storeroom.” It was about six hundred square feet of storage space that belonged to the Far East Department. The Met provided security and covered insurance and utilities expenses. At Sackler’s request, the museum installed a telephone line that bypassed the main switchboard and rang only in that room. Remarkably, most of the museum’s staff were unaware of the room’s existence. It was not identified on charts or floorplans.34

The unusual concessions Sackler had won were legal, but somehow “shifty,” according to Joseph Noble.35 The general opinion of Sackler did not improve when he selected Lois Katz as his curator for his collection stored at the Met. Katz was an associate curator at the Brooklyn Museum’s Department of Asian Art, having started there as an instructor in the Education Division.36 Although she was well versed in Chinese bronzes, she was not a widely published Ivy League PhD, the background the Met relished. The Met directors were also not pleased when Sackler insisted that Paul Singer be the collection’s “research fellow-consultant.”37

Arthur Sackler wanted approval from institutions and businesses he respected. For the time being, however, he ignored the backbiting and chalked it up to jealousy. He had barely wrapped up the handshake agreement for the naming of the second-floor Sackler Gallery when the President’s Advisory Commission released its final report on November 15, 1963. It contained an exhibit listing drugs “associated with physical dependence.”38 There was no surprise it included opiates, morphine, and barbiturates. The shocker was the inclusion of Miltown and Librium. The commission was so concerned about Librium and Miltown that it urged the creation of a special federal unit “to regulate… [such] dangerous drugs.”39 Adding to the confusion, the report classified amphetamines, cocaine, and marijuana as nonaddictive.40

Roche and Sackler feared that listing Librium—the number one selling drug in America that year—as addictive and dangerous and riskier than cocaine and amphetamines was something that would receive widespread press coverage and spark considerable patient angst. A week after the report had been released, and while Roche and Sackler were finalizing a strategy for a public rebuttal, Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John Kennedy in Dallas. While the country reeled in shock and grief, there was a sliver of good news for Roche and Sackler: the report’s damning conclusions about Librium got lost in the wake of JFK’s murder.

I. The commission’s makeup demonstrated that political connections trumped the need for specialized scientific or medical knowledge. Elijah Barrett Prettyman, the chairman, was a respected federal judge. The other lay members were Henry Kimball, a powerful Michigan congressman; James Dumpson, New York City’s first African American commissioner of welfare; and Austin MacCormick, a criminology professor. As for the three doctors, Rafael Sanchez-Ubeda was a general surgeon; James Dixon, the president of the liberal arts Antioch College; and Roger Egeberg, a public health advocate and educator, was most famous for being General Douglas MacArthur’s World War II doctor.

II. Some Sino experts, such as the University of Washington’s Roy Andrew Miller, thought “the highly questionable nature” of Sackler’s acquisitions cast a pall over all of Sackler’s Asian collectibles. Miller believed that if Sackler had tried to obtain “anything worth having” from the communist government, “they would never have allowed it to leave the country in the first place.”

III. The 1963 report for “Donors and Lenders” had “Dr. and Mrs. Arthur M. Sackler” and “Raymond Sackler” listed as having contributed an unspecified amount of “money and securities.” Raymond was also under “Fellows in Perpetuity,” which meant he had made a cash contribution of at least $5,000 to be included in an elite group of thirty-six donors.