# Theresa Sackler **Dame Theresa Elizabeth Sackler** (née Rowling, born 1949) is the third wife and widow of [[Mortimer Sackler]]. They married in 1980, and he died in 2010. She was a Purdue director for more than two decades and chaired the family's main UK charity. She matters to the KB as the Sackler at the center of the UK side of the philanthropy collapse: the moment British museums stopped taking the money. The shared family story lives on [[Sackler Family]]. A former teacher from Staffordshire, she lives in the United Kingdom. She was made a Dame in 2011 for philanthropy (one source). Her own children with Mortimer are Marissa, Sophia and Michael Sackler. [[Mortimer D.A. Sackler]] is her stepson, not her son. ## Purdue and the UK companies - The Massachusetts complaint places her on Purdue's board by 1995. In her own sworn July 2019 declaration, she said she served on the board of Purdue Pharma Inc. "until September 7, 2018." - She is listed as a director of Napp Pharmaceutical Holdings Ltd., the Sacklers' British company in the [[Mundipharma]] network, since 1999 (one source: a corporate-registry aggregator). - She was named as a personal defendant in the Massachusetts and New York cases (2018–19) and is one of the eight board-member heirs in the 2025 settlement (Tennessee AG announcement). ## The Sackler Trust and the name-removal wave She chaired the Sackler Trust and was a trustee of the V&A from 2011 to 2019. In March 2019 the National Portrait Gallery and the Sackler Trust dropped a planned £1 million grant, and Tate said it would take no more Sackler money. On March 25, 2019, the Trust suspended all new UK giving. In her statement she said press attention to the US cases had "created immense pressure on the scientific, medical, educational and arts institutions here in the UK." Artist [[Nan Goldin]]'s group P.A.I.N. drove much of the protest pressure that followed. | Date | Institution | What changed | |---|---|---| | 2019-07 | Louvre | Sackler name removed from the Oriental Antiquities wing | | 2021-03 | Serpentine (London) | Serpentine Sackler Gallery renamed Serpentine North | | 2021-12-09 | Metropolitan Museum of Art | Seven spaces renamed, including the "Dr. Mortimer D. Sackler and Theresa Sackler Gallery" (named in 1986) | | 2022-02 | Tate | Sackler name removed | | 2022-03 | British Museum | Raymond and Beverly Sackler rooms and wing renamed (her in-laws' branch) | | 2022-10 | V&A | Sackler Courtyard and Sackler Centre for Arts Education renamed | The de-namings cost the family its reputation, not its money: the institutions kept the buildings. ## Settlement Under the plan confirmed by Judge Sean Lane on November 18, 2025, which took effect on May 1, 2026, Purdue's assets passed to Knoa Pharma. She gets protection only from claimants who opted in. The Sacklers' international companies, Mundipharma among them, sit outside the Purdue bankruptcy. ## See Also - [[Sackler Family]] · [[Mortimer Sackler]] · [[Mortimer D.A. Sackler]] · [[Kathe Sackler]] · [[Nan Goldin]] - [[Purdue Pharma]] · [[Mundipharma]] · [[OxyContin]] · [[Harrington v. Purdue Pharma]] · [[Opioid Crisis Timeline]]