Ohio State University has ended its review of whether to strip billionaire benefactor Les Wexner's name from campus buildings, despite hundreds of requests to do so over his connections to Jeffrey Epstein. Interim Provost Trevor Brown made the decision public on Friday 6 November, overruling the advisory committee that had been conducting the review.

The move lands heavily on the Wexner Center for the Arts, the university's contemporary art institution, which Wexner funded and where he remains board chair. Staff at the centre told Hyperallergic they had been directly affected by public anger at the association, and their union, Wex Workers United, warned that workers would bear the brunt of the decision by fielding hostile comments from visitors and having their work questioned because of the name on the building.

The controversy has already cost the centre support. In June, executive director Cat Predmore told local public radio station WOSU that one artist and one grantmaking organisation had withdrawn from showing work at and funding the centre respectively because of Wexner's links to Epstein. The university's decision to halt the renaming review leaves that reputational problem unresolved, with staff rather than leadership absorbing the public reaction.

Wexner, the retail billionaire behind the university's arts centre, has long faced scrutiny over his relationship with Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender who died in custody in 2019. The decision to keep his name on the institution closes a process that campaigners had hoped would distance one of Ohio's leading arts venues from that association.