Wexner Center for the Arts Workers Call for Institution to Be Renamed Over Top Funder’s Epstein Ties
8May 23, 2026
Unionized staffers at theWexner Center for the Artsin Columbus, Ohio, have demanded that the institution remove top funder Les Wexner’s name from its moniker following the discovery of his close ties to the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
According to a May 21post to their Instagram, Wexner Workers United (WWU), under the aegis of AFSCME Ohio Council 8, Local 332, sent a letter to the leadership of Ohio State University, under whose auspices the noncollecting institution operates, saying that “Wexner’s name on our building does a profound disservice to the incredible artists we work with and to our community members who deserve to engage with art without feeling complicity in supporting human traffickers, rapists, and pedophiles.”
Wexner, a cofounder of Bath & Bodyworks, the founder of Limited Brands, and the onetime principle of global clothing retailers Abercrombie & Fitch and Victoria’s Secret, is an art collector and a major donor to the Wexner Center, which was named for his father. The younger Wexner contributed $25 million to the center’s construction in the late 1980s. Around the same time, he met Epstein, with whom he would remain friends for decades until discovering that the financier had been stealing from him. PBS reports that Wexner’s name is mentioned more than one thousand times in the Epstein Files. Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, who committed suicide in 2025, named Wexner as among the men to whom she was trafficked by Epstein. Wexner has denied meeting Giuffre and has consistently said he was unaware of Epstein’s crimes.
WWU members cited as precedent for removal of Wexner’s name from the institution’s moniker and buildings the removal of the Sackler name from the galleries at the Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
“Ohio State has an established procedure for requests regarding space and entity names,” an Ohio State University spokesperson told Artforum. “Students, faculty, staff and alumni can submit requests online, and each request receives full consideration.”
This post was amended on 5/22/26 at 3:21 p.m. to include a response from OSU.