Workers Push to Rename Wexner Center for the Arts Over Epstein Ties
The union said the Victoria’s Secret billionaire and Epstein associate’s name “does a profound disservice” to artists and community members.
Unionized staff at the Ohio State University's (OSU) Wexner Center for the Arts have officially called for the renaming of the institution and other campus buildings named after Les Wexner, the university's billionaire benefactor who had granted convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein power of attorney over his massive fortune for decades.
In its official statement to the university, Wex Workers United said that the retail magnate's name “does a profound disservice to the incredible artists we work with and to our community members who deserve to engage with art without feeling complicit in supporting human traffickers, rapists, and pedophiles.”
A union representative who spoke to Hyperallergic on the condition of anonymity shared that negative comments from patrons and visitors about the center's name were “directly affecting our staff.”
The union’s call for the university to rename the arts center and other campus facilities bearing the Wexner name follows similar requests. Following the billionaire’s deposition in February, the Ohio Nurses Association demanded that the university rename the Wexner Medical Center. Concurrently, OSU's students, alumni, and community members have staged multiple protests on campus, including an April 10 action in which students “redacted” Wexner's name from the art center's façade with a black tarp.
OSU spokesperson Chris Booker declined to comment on the Wex Workers United's statement, but told Hyperallergic that approximately 500 requests have been filed through the official University Naming Review Procedure since Wexner was formally questioned, noting that “each request is thoughtfully considered.”
During an interview ahead of the billionaire's deposition, OSU President Ted Carter noted his appreciation for the Wexners' philanthropic support and explained that the university's rigorous procedure for reviewing and approving name changes “goes after fact-finding” and “cannot be based on a supposition or filling in a narrative,” detailing why an earlier request to rename the Wexner Football Complex was rejected.
Wexner, the founder and former CEO of L Brands, the parent company of Victoria's Secret, has never been formally charged and has publicly denied having any knowledge of Epstein's crimes since 2019. He was subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee in January after the release of an unredacted FBI document from 2019, which listed him as a co-conspirator of Epstein's child sex trafficking ring.
In his pre-deposition statement and throughout the questioning, the 88-year-old maintained that he never bore witness to the “side of Epstein’s life for which he is now infamous” throughout the time that the disgraced financier oversaw his finances, adding that “the thought of what he did makes me sick.”
Wexner also reiterated that he had terminated all contact with Epstein when he was charged for the first time in 2007, later discovering that Epstein had been misappropriating funds from the family fortune. During the deposition, Wexner stated that he never met, heard of, or had any sexual contact with Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Epstein's primary accuser, whose allegations that she had been trafficked to the billionaire for sex on multiple occasions became public after documents were unsealed in 2024.
At the time of the 2024 unsealing, the university described Epstein's crimes as “reprehensible” in a statement to Hyperallergic, and referred to a $336,000 contribution OSU made to the state's human trafficking initiative in 2020 based on the figure that Epstein himself pledged to the university in decades past. However, OSU stood by Wexner in light of the allegations, noting to Hyperallergic that the university was grateful for the benefactor's “ongoing support and service.”
Skepticism surrounds Wexner's claims of total ignorance of Epstein's child sex trafficking crimes as he was mentioned in the Epstein files over 1,000 times, and House Oversight Committee members asserted that he was essentially financially responsible. Reports on the Epstein-Wexner connection in 2019 also showed that Epstein had posed as a talent recruiter for Victoria's Secret to lure models; Wexner has claimed that he confronted Epstein about the behavior and that he denied it.
Wex Workers United stated that “artists are choosing not to work with us because of Wexner's close association with Epstein,” adding that staff members see firsthand how students, visitors, artists, and colleagues “grapple with the weight of coming through our doors.”
Though OSU has yet to rename a building, as the procedure was instituted in 2022, the union representative noted that other universities and cultural institutions worldwide have divested from the Sacklers over the pharmaceutical family's role in enabling the opioid crisis.
“We care so much about the artists we work with and the community we serve, and the bid to rename the building is rooted in the fact that we believe in and are proud of what we do,” the representative added. “The name really is a detriment to our mission.”
