Daniel Weiss, a former president of Haverford College and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, will be the new director and CEO of the Philadelphia Art Museum following Sasha Suda’s abrupt dismissal.
Weiss will take office Dec. 1, just a few months after the institution rebranded and announced a new logo. Officials said he’ll stay in the role through at least 2028, overseeing curation, operations, fundraising, programming and strategic planning.
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Prior to his return to the Philadelphia area, Weiss was the president and later CEO of the the Met from 2015 to 2023. During his tenure, he led the museum through the Covid-19 pandemic, when it was shut down to visitors. He also oversaw a new facilities master plan and helped stabilize the institution’s finances.
Weiss inherited a number of issues within the museum, as his predecessor, Thomas Campbell, was “widely seen as having failed to recognize a ballooning budget deficit, adequately prepare for an ambitious building expansion or unite the staff behind his agenda,” the New York Times reported.
He also saw the institution through public pressure to refuse money from the Sackler family, who gained their wealth from OxyContin manufacturing company Purdue Pharma. In 2018, Weiss made the $25 admission rate for visitors who don’t live in New York state mandatory, instead of suggested.
Since leaving the Met, he was a professor of humanities and adviser at Johns Hopkins University. He received a Ph.D. from the school, chaired the art history department and was dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at the university in his early career. Prior to his role at the Met, he served as president of two Pennsylvania higher education institutions: Lafayette College from 2005-2013 and Haverford College from 2013-2015.
Suda, the former CEO of the Philadelphia Art Museum, was fired in November, just a few weeks after the rebranding effort was unveiled. She had two years left on her contract. The final version of the name and logo change were not approved by the museum’s board of trustees, according to Philly Mag. A week after the board said she was fired for “cause,” Suda filed a lawsuit for wrongful termination, saying that there was a “small, corrupt and unethical faction” who were creating a toxic environment at the museum.