engineering

Sackler Wing

Sackler Wing is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Sackler Wing rather than just read about it. In short: The Sackler Wing was built in 1978 at The Met Fifth Avenue, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's flagship location in New York City. Designed by Kevin Roche and located to the north of the museum's original building, the wing was built to house the Temple of Dendur, brought from Egypt to New York.

Key takeaways

Sackler Wing belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Sackler Wing to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Sackler Wing from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Sackler Wing was built in 1978 at The Met Fifth Avenue, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's flagship location in New York City. Designed by Kevin Roche and located to the north of the museum's original building, the wing was built to house the Temple of Dendur, brought from Egypt to New York. The wing was named after the Sackler family, which is associated with the Purdue Pharma company accused of fueling the opioid crisis in the US. In 2021 the name Sackler was removed from several elements of the Met Museum, but no substitute name for this wing was proposed. Maps of the Met Museum show in 2023 no name for this particular wing, while the related one situated at the south side, the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, remains well identified. The space within the Wing housing the temple is just Gallery 131.

History The addition of the wing was part of a comprehensive architectural renewal plan for the Museum by then director of the Met, Thomas Hoving. Several additions were planned, with different donors, but in order to house the Egyptian temple of Dendur, Hoving calculated that $3.5 million was needed. Arthur Sackler volunteered that amount in 1967. In the negotiations that followed, names for several galleries and wings were assigned to the Sacklers, with personal mentions of the brothers Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond, each mentioned with the letters "M.D." following his name in every signage associated. It was also stipulated that the money would come personally from the three doctors. However, the payment of the donation was to be paid over twenty years, and the city "ended up chipping in $1.4 million", according to journalist Patrick Radden Keefe in his book Empire of Pain. The plan was approved in 1971. The Sackler Wing was complete by the end of 1978, and the rest in 1991; all the work was directed by Roche's architectural firm, Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates. The launch of a new exhibit was prepared for opening of the Wing, The Treasures of King Tut, showing objects from the tomb of Tutankhamun. A show by choreographer Martha Graham was also commissioned for the opening by the Sacklers. Another element of the extension was the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, with the Andre Meyer Galleries above, which was added to the south. The adjacent corners were completed by the respective additions of the new American Wing and the Wallace Galleries for Twentieth Century Art. When Kevin Roche died in 2019, The Sackler Wing was praised as one of his most notable achievements. Roche was a recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, and it is customary that the presentation ceremonies of this prize pay homage to works done by previous laureates of the prize; following this tradition, the ceremony for laureate Ieoh Ming Pei in 1983 took place in the Sackler Wing. The Sackler Wing hosted, until the name was dropped in 2021, several galleries also named after the Sackler family: The Sackler Wing Galleries (galleries 223–232), The Temple of Dendur in The Sackler Wing (Gallery 131) and The Sackler Gallery for Egyptian Art (Gallery 130). In March 2018, the artist Nan Goldin and around 100 fellow activists of the PAIN group, threw pill bottles into the moat that is in the Wing, to protest sponsorship by the family that owned Purdue Pharma, producer and marketer of the opioid Oxycontin, associated to the opioid epidemic. PAIN's campaign, which continued in other art institutions associated to the Sackler name, was finally successful: The Met announced in May 2019, that it would reject further contributions from the Sacklers; and in 2021, finally, the name was also dropped in a decision mutually agreed among the Museum and the descendants of Mortimer Sackler and Raymond Sackler. No substitute name for the wing has been proposed.

Gallery

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Sackler Wing

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Sackler Wing claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Sackler Wing before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Sackler Wing ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Sackler Wing

In research: Sackler Wing appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Sackler Wing in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Sackler Wing is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1978 establishments in New York City, Buildings and structures completed in 1978, Metropolitan Museum of Art, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Sackler Wing outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Sackler Wing in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Sackler Wing means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Sackler Wing out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Sackler Wing in simple terms?

Why does Sackler Wing matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Sackler Wing?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Sackler Wing.