It starts with a museum and ends with a home. At the beginning of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, directed by Laura Poitras, we see photographer Nan Goldin and other members of the P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) group entering the Temple of Dendur. It is March of 2018, and the name of the Sackler family is still all over the walls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In fact, the Temple of Dendur is located in the Sackler Wing, or it was on that windy day.
Goldin and a group of activists all younger than her, maybe fifty of them, gather near the shallow indoor pool next to the stone temple. “I’m really nervous,” Goldin says to another activist. After a brief call-and-response of “mic check” with her crew, Goldin starts yelling out, and we hear her words repeated by the P.A.I.N. members as they toss empty prescription bottles (both orange and blue) into the pool.
“Temple of greed!”
“Temple of greed!”
“Temple of Oxy!”
“Temple of Oxy!”
“Sacklers lied!”
“Sacklers lied!”
“Thousands died!”
“Thousands died!”
If you know the Sacklers, there’s a re…