{"id":397799,"date":"2026-01-09T19:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T19:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/397799\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T19:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T19:41:10","slug":"inside-the-philadelphia-art-museums-epic-meltdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/397799\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Philadelphia Art Museum\u2019s Epic Meltdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLongform<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The exclusive story behind the brutal ouster of Sasha Suda and the new civil war at Philadelphia\u2019s premiere cultural institution<\/p>\n

\t\t\tGet a compelling long read and must-have lifestyle tips in your inbox every Sunday morning \u2014 great with coffee!\t\t<\/p>\n

\"philadelphia<\/p>\n

The Art of the Takedown: Sasha Suda\u2019s brutal ouster at the Philadelphia Art Museum \/ Illustration by Britt Spencer<\/p>\n

On the morning of Tuesday, October 28th, Sasha Suda, the director and CEO of the Philadelphia Art Museum, was called into a meeting at the office of museum board vice chairman Osagie Imasogie, in Center City.<\/p>\n

There had been escalating tensions between Suda and the board for going on a year by this point, but that day she wasn\u2019t worried. She\u2019d just returned from a triumphant week in Prague and Vienna with two dozen donors. While there, she\u2019d solidified a gift from Comcast co-founder and museum trustee emeritus Julian Brodsky for $20 million to create a children\u2019s learning center at the museum, with Comcast\u2019s Brian Roberts throwing in an additional $5 million. \u201cI called [board chair] Ellen Caplan and some other board members from Europe,\u201d Suda says, \u201cand everybody was thrilled.\u201d <\/p>\n

Suda had been summoned to Imasogie\u2019s office because the board had initiated an outside investigation into museum finances, which they wanted to discuss with her. She wasn\u2019t particularly concerned about that. \u201cI\u2019d never hidden anything from them,\u201d Suda says. Besides, a few board members told her the investigation was a broad look at how the whole system was working.<\/p>\n

Four board members were in the room: Caplan, Orlando Esposito, Tac Justi, and Imasogie, who quickly got to the point. The investigation, he said, revealed that Suda had been dishonest, twice.<\/p>\n

Suda was stunned. She asked Imasogie what he was talking about, but, she says, he wouldn\u2019t elaborate. And suddenly it hit her: She was being canned. \u201cI said to them, very calmly, \u2018This is something that you all have been trying to achieve for quite some time. But this doesn\u2019t feel like the right way to do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Suda says she was given a choice: resign amicably, or be fired. They hoped she\u2019d do it amicably. She had until the end of the day to make her decision.<\/p>\n

Suda was incredulous. That very night, she was to host directors of prominent museums from around the world at the home of general board member Jennifer Rice. (Rice declined to comment for this piece.) It was an important step toward getting Philadelphia, which had fallen out of global programming partnerships, back on the international map.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to do that\u201d \u2014 make a life-altering professional decision \u2014 \u201cand I have to host these people? How am I going to do that?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just have to do it,\u201d she says Imasogie responded.<\/p>\n

Suda gathered her things, said she had a lot to think about, and left.<\/p>\n

The following Tuesday, Election Day, Suda received an email from the museum, which told her she was being \u201cterminated with cause.\u201d And that was that: Her brief, momentous career at the museum was over. The news, summarily leaked to Philly Mag<\/a> and the Inquirer, sent shock waves through both the city and the international arts community.<\/p>\n

But the bitter fallout was just getting started.<\/p>\n

On November 10th, Suda sued the museum, after \u2014 she says \u2014 the museum refused to pay her an acceptable severance and consent to a mutual non-disparagement agreement. Her suit alleges that \u201ca small, corrupt, and unethical faction of the board\u201d fired her for just doing her job. The museum countered in its own legal filing that Suda had been fired for giving herself unauthorized raises. Suda is pushing for a jury trial. But the employment contract she signed stipulates that work disputes be settled privately, in arbitration. The museum has asked the court to hold Suda to it.<\/p>\n

As of press time, the court\u2019s decision was still pending. But, of course, the bigger, more compelling question is this: How the hell did the museum \u2014 and Suda \u2014 get to this place?<\/p>\n

This is one of the most spectacular examples of the failure of board leadership ever in a prominent Philadelphia institution.\u201d \u2014 David L. Cohen<\/p>\n

To learn how it all went sideways, I talked to some 30 insiders, including board members, though none would allow me to quote them by name in this piece. Yes, it\u2019s that messy, and the museum is that insular and self-protective. In full disclosure, some of the museum\u2019s board members are connected to Philadelphia magazine\u2019s nonprofit parent company, Citizen Media Group. Leslie Anne Miller, for example, is a founding donor of CMG; Jennifer Rice is a board member; and Osagie Imasogie has previously supported The Philadelphia Citizen, another CMG publication. These individuals hold differing views on Suda\u2019s firing; their inclusion here reflects the magazine\u2019s commitment to reporting this story independently.<\/p>\n

Neither the museum\u2019s board nor anyone representing the museum would comment at all; not even their public relations consultant, Brian Tierney, would weigh in. Others spoke off the record or for background only. But I met with Suda herself, who has not spoken publicly about any of this until now.<\/p>\n

Another person who agreed to speak on the record about the whole thing is David L. Cohen, longtime Philly civic and business leader (and chairman of Citizen Media Group\u2019s board), now back in town after serving four years as ambassador to Canada. Cohen befriended Suda in Ottawa, where the American Embassy sits practically next door to the National Gallery; she was director and CEO there before coming to Philly. He sees how Suda was treated here as an affront, a disaster. Cohen doesn\u2019t mince words: \u201cThis is one of the most spectacular examples of the failure of board leadership ever in a prominent Philadelphia institution.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s more than that<\/a>. The failure at the museum is ultimately not just about what this institution is, what it wants to be, and who gets to call the shots. It\u2019s a referendum on how young change agents get treated in this city \u2014 a symptom of Philadelphia\u2019s age-old insular struggle between Old and New. In the end, it\u2019s a fight over who defines and represents this place to the broader world.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

I meet Suda, 45, in a Rittenhouse Square office where her lawyer, Luke Nikas, an art-world litigator from New York, has arranged our first interview. She is tall \u2014 nearly six feet \u2014 and dressed casually, her brown hair swept back. She is friendly and almost eager, it seems, to answer questions, staying even-keeled, even when recounting the gnarly details of how she feels she was treated. Later, she\u2019ll tell a friend that talking through her story felt like a first step forward, but she isn\u2019t kidding herself. \u201cThis is still really hard some days,\u201d she says. Her position at the museum had been a dream job, a life\u2019s goal come to fruition.<\/p>\n

Suda inherited her passion for art from her father, a Czech immigrant who\u2019d studied medicine in the homeland. In 1968, he fled\u00a0to New York during the Soviet invasion; his brother was a journalist with Radio Free Europe, which made the entire family vulnerable to persecution. He then joined family in Canada, where he met and married Sasha\u2019s mother, a fellow Czech refugee, and started his own family in Toronto. He never returned to medicine, becoming a teacher of ski resort management instead. Suda describes what sounds like a happy childhood: There was a great deal of skiing, and, she says, \u201cWe would go to New York a lot as a family. My dad had this connection to museums \u2014 the Guggenheim and the Met. Those trips are seminal memories for me.\u201d They sparked Suda\u2019s own passion for how great exhibits can feed our imaginative lives.<\/p>\n

She went on to study art history at Princeton, discovered the Philadelphia Art Museum, and was immediately smitten.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like a bite-size version of the Met, where it had an extremely high- quality collection, but it was navigable and had a soul,\u201d Suda says. \u201cIt was started by industrialists at the turn of the century. But at one point, it became a place where artists are invited to install their own work in rooms dedicated to their legacy. It\u2019s extraordinary \u2014 not just because you can go and see a lot of Jasper Johns in one experience, but because the institution really believes in the artist and really believes in the power of art to have an impact over time.\u00a0The confidence for a museum to say, \u2018This modern artist is going to be somebody who people will be interested in for the next 150, 250 years,\u2019 it takes a remarkable amount of courage. That\u2019s why most museums don\u2019t do it. Yet this one did.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"philadelphia<\/p>\n

Sasha Suda \/ Photograph by Jauhien Sasnou<\/p>\n

For Suda, museums are actual worlds that open right before us. \u201cHere in Philly are these period rooms that are meant to give the public the opportunity to travel without traveling, to be in ancient China, say. And this idea of transporting people and engaging in a little bit of imagination play, which then carries through into the artist rooms \u2014 that doesn\u2019t exist anymore at other places.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suda went to Williams College for a master\u2019s in art history, then to NYU for a doctorate in medieval manuscripts (her dissertation was The Making of Girona Martyrology and the Cult of Saints in Late Medieval Bohemia \u2014 yes, she\u2019s a big-time art nerd). She worked at the Met as a medievalist from 2003 to 2011, then became a curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario. In 2019, at the age of 39, she was recruited by the National Gallery in Ottawa to be its director and CEO, their youngest in more than a century. She received some criticism for being too \u201cwoke\u201d there, for focusing too much on exhibits that celebrated decolonization. But Suda herself proudly cites a high point of her tenure: Each year when the Canadian government allocated $8 million to the National Gallery, she\u2019d use it to bring art to other parts of the country \u2014 Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Newfoundland, and so forth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever we commissioned for and with those communities was part of the National Gallery collection, but it was cared for by them,\u201d she says. \u201cI was drawn to the notion that one institution could serve an entire country, even though it seems like kind of an absurd ambition.\u201d (So: an art nerd with a strong inclusivity streak.)<\/p>\n

In Ottawa, when then-Ambassador David L. Cohen attended a tour Suda was leading, he was dazzled.<\/p>\n

\u201cSasha is absolutely brilliant,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are just some people who blow you away by what they know, how they can talk about it, how they can translate their knowledge and excitement into excitement and passion that you feel.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 2021, Suda was gaining a reputation as one of the best young museum directors in the world. And the Philadelphia Art Museum took notice.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The museum was looking for a new director and CEO to replace retiring Timothy Rub, whose long tenure \u2014 he\u2019d led the museum through a 15-year, $233 million renovation and expansion<\/a> designed by architect Frank Gehry \u2014 was ending on a sour note. Long-simmering tensions around pay equity and diversity (related to both personnel and museum presentations) had come to an ugly head, further inflamed by complaints that allegations of sexual misconduct<\/a> by a former museum manager had been met with a shrug in the executive office. By 2021, as union negotiations picked up steam among the museum\u2019s rank and file, Rub was preparing for his own departure. The museum began a search for a leader to both deal with the problems and modernize the institution, which needed a bolt of young energy to ramp up funding. Suda was seen as an intriguing candidate, one who\u2019d bring a fast-moving millennial\u2019s sensibility to the staid arts behemoth on the hill: open, fresh, artist-focused, committed to bringing new audiences to the institution. Someone, perhaps, whose \u201cwokeness\u201d might be exactly what the museum needed in a post-Rub leader.<\/p>\n

In the fall of 2021, Suda was invited to interview for the role of museum director and CEO. The interview was led by Leslie Anne\u00a0Miller, then head of the board. A major arts patron, Miller is known as a no-nonsense player both on the museum\u2019s board and throughout the city. She had a long career as a litigation and mediation lawyer, and was Governor Ed Rendell\u2019s general counsel for two years, overseeing 450 attorneys and 32 agencies, the first woman ever in that position. She is, in a word, formidable, and also \u2014 by multiple accounts \u2014 someone who is used to wielding power and getting things done.<\/p>\n

The 70-member museum board is also impressive and well-connected. Current board chair Ellen Caplan, for instance, brings deep philanthropy to the position (the Wistar Institute<\/a> cancer center is named for her and her real-estate-developer husband, Ron Caplan). Vice chair Osagie Imasogie, a serial entrepreneur and investor, is head of the board of advisers at Penn\u2019s law school. John Alchin is a former Comcast and banking executive. Martha McGeary Snider, who served as Governor Rendell\u2019s arts and culture adviser for eight years, was once married to late Flyers owner Ed Snider. Connie Williams, a founding donor of CMG, is a former state senator, VP of the Hess Foundation, and former board president who\u2019s given generously to the Art Museum. The list goes on, a who\u2019s who of Philadelphia money, power, and pomp. But when it comes to running things, it\u2019s the dozen or so members of the executive board who really call the shots.<\/p>\n

Shortly after Suda\u2019s interview at the museum, Miller offered her the job. But it was no longer the job Suda had interviewed for, which was director and CEO \u2014 running both the art and business sides of the museum. Miller now told Suda that the job was to be split in two: Suda would be the director only; someone else would be the CEO.<\/p>\n

Suda was taken aback. (Miller didn\u2019t respond to requests for an interview.)<\/p>\n

Suda put her off and did her own digging, eventually learning that some board members wanted an art person to run the museum and a smaller group wanted a business leader. It\u2019s actually a current debate in the arts field: What sort of skills better serve the institution? But Suda wanted to put her stamp on the museum by running the whole shebang, the way she had at the National Gallery.<\/p>\n

Soon, she heard from Imasogie. He said the board was courting John Fry<\/a>, then the president of Drexel University, to be the museum\u2019s new CEO (sources confirm that this was a serious pursuit). Fry would need a year to wind things down at Drexel, Imasogie said, after which he\u2019d deal with the board and the business side of things at the museum. In the interim, Suda could be both the director and the CEO, and then she\u2019d revert to director only.<\/p>\n

\u201cMiller and Imasogie wanted someone else as CEO; others wanted me, or somebody like me,\u201d Suda says. She thinks that \u201cbecause I\u2019m young and female, they thought they could make both work.\u201d In the meantime, of course, she\u2019d be thrown into a messy situation, dealing with newly unionized workers who were threatening a strike and managing the ongoing fallout of those sexual misconduct complaints. Only to be rewarded, when it was all done, with the stripped-down position of director only.<\/p>\n

Annoyed, she turned down the offer. Then, in late spring, Miller called to offer her the full job.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou mean the one I applied for?\u201d Suda, confused by the bait and switch, remembers saying.<\/p>\n

It was a watershed moment for her. Suda wasn\u2019t desperate to come here. She could simply stay put at the National Gallery in Ottawa, with her sculptor husband, Albert Zuger, and their (now) 10-year-old twins. But this was an extraordinary opportunity to guide and impact a museum she had loved since her first visit, one whose sensibility was powerful to her.<\/p>\n

So she met once again with Miller and the hiring committee. She says she told them that the way the job had been offered, then altered, then changed back to its original form was \u201cnot a promising way\u201d to begin her tenure at the museum. She also said she expected to be paid the same $720,000 salary given Timothy Rub (whose departing package had included a John Deere tractor).<\/p>\n

It wouldn\u2019t look good, Suda felt, for them to bring in a younger female director and CEO, and pay her less than her older male predecessor. (These things are often discussed in the museum world.) She stuck to her guns.<\/p>\n

They gave her the money.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

In the eight-month transition between Rub\u2019s leaving and Suda\u2019s coming on board, Miller acted as CEO, even hanging some of the art she owned in her office at the museum. \u201cShe really set up shop,\u201d Suda says. September 26, 2022, Suda\u2019s first day on the job, coincided with the beginning of the new union\u2019s 19-day strike<\/a>. Suda says Miller wanted her to stay away from the museum during the strike. Suda went to work anyway. \u201cThe issues that prompted the strike predated my tenure,\u201d she says, \u201cso I felt okay crossing the picket line until the offer they were picketing was one I had helped to pen.\u201d (For her actions, she wound up getting doxxed online, she says. And at the hotel where she was temporarily staying, the receptionist told her that people had shown up looking for her.) Suda says Miller didn\u2019t want her to be involved in union negotiations, either. Suda alleges that the board president characterized her tenure at the National Gallery as \u201cat best, a finishing school\u201d \u2014 that is, hardly the big time, nothing like the down and dirty of Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

Miller, Suda says, would often voice her unvarnished opinions, which was startling to her \u2014 she found Miller to be a force with a hair-trigger edge. But as she settled into the job, something bothered Suda more: a growing belief that Miller was keeping her away from the larger board. When Suda was hired, she dealt only with the small faction who hired her \u2014 Miller and Imasogie, in particular. She says Miller provided no opportunity for her to meet the full 70-person board. During the strike, of course, board business was handled online, a remnant of COVID, but the distance from the rest of the board felt intentional to Suda \u2014 an indication that Miller was in charge and would keep a tight rein on her. And given that much of the board was over 70, with decades-long tenures and, for many, only sporadic interest in museum business, keeping the new hire outside the fold wasn\u2019t tough.<\/p>\n

At this point, did it occur to Suda to run for the hills \u2014 or back to Canada?<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say I was in a bit of denial,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause everything was in motion. There were movers at my house in Ottawa \u2014 we\u2019d bought a house in Gladwyne in a day. There wasn\u2019t a kill switch for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A union rally at the Philadelphia Art Museum in July of 2022 \/ Photograph by Tim Tiebout<\/p>\n

But things got \u2026 hairier. In December 2022, just three months into the job, Miller told Suda that she\u2019d been negotiating with Phillies owner John Middleton about displaying his art \u2014 considered perhaps the finest private collection of American art in the country \u2014 at the museum, a deal that Miller would control. Suda saw this as an obvious intrusion into her own territory as director. Moreover, displaying private collections can be tricky: Would the art be donated to the museum, or was the museum serving as a kind of gallery where the value of the art would rise before it was spirited away?<\/p>\n

Suda, circumventing Miller entirely, says she invited Middleton to her house for a discussion. His intent, she understood, was only to share his art with a wide audience, and a partnership developed, with Miller excluded. The resulting \u201cA Nation of Artists\u201d \u2014 some 120 of Middleton\u2019s paintings \u2014 will be a central exhibit of the city\u2019s Semiquincentennial celebration this year, to be shown in extended shows at both the museum and the Academy of the Fine Arts. (Before she got fired, Suda had been working on a next step: She\u2019d visited Crystal Bridges \u2014 the Arkansas museum created by Walmart heir Alice Walton \u2014 to brainstorm with leadership there about taking Middleton\u2019s collection on a national tour.)<\/p>\n

None of this pleased Miller, says Suda, who soon learned from support staff that Miller had characterized her as \u201cincompetent\u201d and \u201ca snake,\u201d among other shortcomings.<\/p>\n

Then there were the many smaller intrusions. Miller was privy to Suda\u2019s calendar, Suda says, and would interrupt her day with marching orders: \u201cI know you\u2019re in a committee meeting, but I need you to make some calls\u201d \u2014 for example, to board members to alert them that they were pushing out the head of development, a decision Miller had been on Suda to make. Another example, per Suda, was Miller wanting to control how Suda would terminate the employment of Suda\u2019s own assistant, someone Miller had known for 20 years.<\/p>\n

Some of this sounds absurd, and perhaps Suda would have been better off if she had ignored the intrusions and carried on. But the accretion of incidents made her feel isolated; she suspected that Miller had \u201cseen me as a threat from day one.\u201d<\/p>\n

She found an unexpectedly sympathetic sounding board and ally in Bill Peterson, the museum\u2019s new chief operating officer. Miller had installed the former Verizon executive as COO right as Suda started, which had irked Suda at the time. She felt the hiring should have been her call, not Miller\u2019s. (When challenged on it, Suda says, Miller responded, \u201cDon\u2019t be ridiculous.\u201d) Regardless, Suda immediately felt that Peterson was somebody she could trust. She told him she was disturbed by this rocky beginning with Miller. \u201cI was afraid this was going to happen,\u201d she says he responded. \u201cBut I thought it would happen later.\u201d (Peterson did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n

There was one out, Suda saw: Miller told her that she was stepping down as board chair the following year. (She\u2019d served two three-year terms, with an additional year.) Suda decided to wait her out \u2014 if she herself could endure until then.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Suda pressed on. She and her curators came up with exhibitions of cutting-edge art from surprising artists \u2014 some of it culled from the museum\u2019s own archives (95 percent of the museum\u2019s collection is in storage) \u2014 to entice new visitors. She arranged for the U.S. debut of \u201cThe Time Is Always Now\u201d<\/a> (November 2024 through February 2025), which featured contemporary paintings by Black artists of Black figures, after its glorious run at London\u2019s National Portrait Gallery. In a review, Observer.com called the exhibition<\/a> \u201ca striking exploration of humanity that transcends race, illustrating how racial identity is a construct shaped by social and political forces while foregrounding our shared human experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another exhibit, \u201cBoom: Art and Design in the 1940s\u201d<\/a> (April through September 2025), featured 250 works of sculpture, painting, fashion, photography, furniture, and more, including work from Black artists. The Times Literary Supplement gushed<\/a>: \u201cIt is difficult to imagine a more comprehensive exhibition of the art and design of the 1940s.\u201d There was also a surrealist show<\/a> (through February 16th) that brought in paintings from Europe and showed off the museum\u2019s own stored collection, and an exhibit of paintings by Noah Davis<\/a>, a Black cult figure who started the Underground Museum in L.A. Suda might have a doctorate in medieval manuscripts, but her taste in art certainly doesn\u2019t trend wonky.<\/p>\n

Suda also opened up space to make more room for schoolchildren, increasing visits from 8,000 in 2021 to 38,000 in 2024 \u2014 a move that was, as The Philadelphia Citizen reported last August<\/a>, part of her \u201cpeople-forward\u201d vision. \u201cThese students,\u201d the story noted, \u201cmight be future artists or art collectors, donors or curators or, most importantly, lifelong visitors to their city\u2019s premier arts institution \u2014 but only if they feel like it is theirs to enjoy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many board members seemed pleased with her work. \u201cSasha regularly puts the PMA in the global conversation,\u201d board member Jennifer Rice told The Citizen in the same story<\/a>. \u201cBut she\u2019s also not afraid to bring change; she\u2019s not afraid to break things that need to be broken.\u201d Another longtime board member, Kathy Sachs, founder of ArtPhilly, said: \u201cThe PMA is on this hill. I feel like Sasha is walking off that hill, going into the city, meeting lots of people. We \u2026 have a responsibility to our city and our citizens, and that matters to Sasha.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, as that story noted, the artistic direction some board members seemed to love was a point of contention among other longtime members, who felt that Suda\u2019s focus on inclusion was too narrow \u201cwhen it comes to exhibitions.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for fulfilling her role as CEO, Suda\u2019s lawsuit states that over three years she reduced the museum\u2019s $6 million budget deficit by two-thirds and last year pushed past fundraising goals. Her negotiations last year for a new labor contract within the board-approved budget were also successful. Local 397 president Halcyone Schiller told The Citizen, \u201cWe\u2019ve been met with more consideration than I previously experienced from management in terms of problems and how to solve them. We are closer to a place of labor peace than we have been the whole time we\u2019ve had this union.\u201d<\/p>\n

And as for board demands that she find new donors to bring sizable money into the museum, well, there was that $20 million gift she scored from former board member Julian Brodsky (with another $5 mil from Comcast\u2019s Brian Roberts). Brodsky\u2019s commitment landed, it turns out, just a week before Suda was fired.<\/p>\n

One place Suda appeared to struggle was in finding her footing as a workplace leader. One mid-level museum worker remembers open-ended staff meetings where Suda would say, \u201cI\u2019m not afraid of conflict \u2014 you can ask me whatever questions you want,\u201d but then talk around challenging questions. A tech staffer says the gatherings were derided as \u201cword-salad meetings,\u201d where Suda talked fancy and didn\u2019t really say much. Once, adds the staffer, Suda was asked whether the museum was going to take a stance on the growing conflict in Gaza, given that Philadelphia is a sister city to Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel.<\/p>\n

Suda had no response to that, the staffer told me. She was silent for a moment, then called on the next person with a question, which came off to the staffer who told me about it as arrogant and dismissive. Suda, for her part, says she thanked the staffer for the comment, and organized an advisory committee to address the Israel-Gaza conflict, in which the staffer then participated.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the worst complaint was that the openness staffers were hoping for \u2014 for Suda to come in with collaborative leadership, to solicit their feedback on what the coming rebrand should entail, for example \u2014 didn\u2019t happen. In fact, in December, the Inquirer ran an even more pointed critique in a story about low staff morale<\/a>. Staffers worried, the story alleged, that the programming team \u201cbecame less autonomous and more risk-averse under Suda.\u201d And that the reputation and mission of the museum, post-Suda, was at stake.<\/p>\n

Suda says that whatever managerial challenges she faced, \u201cthe accomplishments, exhibitions, financial improvements, school district engagements, and robust plans for the future were all the product of the great work that the team produced, which could not have happened without the input of numerous people inside the museum.\u201d<\/p>\n

In any case, the more pressing problem for Suda seemed to be the issue of managing up. And that raises a question: If you\u2019re making three-quarters of a million dollars to run a major institution, is dealing with a difficult board just, well, part of the gig?<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

In the spring of 2023, Miller stepped down as board chair; she was replaced by board member Ellen Caplan after a few other candidates backed away. Caplan was an odd choice, according to some board members I spoke with. Her bio on the museum website introduces her thusly: \u201cI grew up coming to the Philadelphia Museum of Art with my parents and two older sisters. In fact, in my first memory of the PMA \u2014 at about five years old \u2014 I was trying to reach the top of the desk to give money for a Pay What You Wish Sunday. \u2026 I have countless memories over the years of PMA visits.\u201d That may be sweet, but it also plays into how Suda and some board members saw Caplan: as an enthused volunteer, an envelope-stuffer woefully unprepared to lead the big board of a complex institution.<\/p>\n

Not that Caplan didn\u2019t try, as chair. Early on, she touched base directly, one on one, with all 70 board members, Suda says. But she didn\u2019t know how to prioritize board demands.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like playing whack-a-mole with issues small and large,\u201d Suda says. Maybe somebody sent a donation for 10 grand and the check didn\u2019t get processed on time \u2014 Caplan wanted Suda to call that person and massage his ego for 15 minutes. But Caplan might give only two minutes to the Trump administration\u2019s new rules on DEI or federal funding. \u201cHer head was spinning with all these board complaints,\u201d Suda says. \u201cAnd thinking strategically was a big pivot for her\u201d \u2014 an opinion echoed by board members and a prominent museum partner I spoke with. (Caplan declined a request for comment.)<\/p>\n

Leslie [Anne Miller]\u2019s incredibly intelligent \u2014 she can read a person\u2019s insecurities and exploit them. She operated like a politician.\u201d \u2014 Sasha Suda<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Miller hadn\u2019t really gone away. Suda says that Miller framed photographs taken of herself and Caplan at museum events, and sent them to Caplan. To Suda, it looked like Miller was wooing Caplan \u2014 though Caplan, like Suda, also had to deal with a harsher side of Miller. Caplan shared with Suda that Miller once gave her comprehensive notes on how bad her remarks had been at the last board meeting, including a line-by-line feedback on her tone of voice, and criticized what she\u2019d worn. An exhibitor later told Suda that Miller had complained to him that Caplan needed all the help she could get, given that \u201cshe doesn\u2019t know her ass from her elbow.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLeslie\u2019s incredibly intelligent \u2014 she can read a person\u2019s insecurities and exploit them,\u201d Suda says. \u201cShe operated like a politician.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the fall of 2024, Suda\u2019s standing with Caplan was feeling precarious to her. Suda\u2019s biggest ally, David L. Cohen, knew the situation was dire and tried to step in. He had learned that Caplan might not be seeking a second term as board chair. Given his vast experience heading boards in Philly, if he could be brought in to help run the museum board, Cohen was confident he could make things better and perhaps become board chair when Caplan\u2019s term ended in 2026.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t happen. \u201cDo you really think the full board would have taken umbrage to David L. Cohen going straight on to the executive committee?\u201d a board member wonders. Of course not. To that member\u2019s mind, \u201cthere\u2019s only one insecure, paranoid person responsible for keeping him off\u201d: the current head of the board.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Caplan decided to stay on as chair after all. Cohen never joined the board.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

The real beginning of the end for Suda came in October of 2024. She decided to put staff curator Carlos Basualdo on administrative leave over issues Suda declined to address, after having spoken to Caplan extensively, she says, about the decision.<\/p>\n

But when Suda attended the board meeting in which the Basualdo leave was brought up, several members were furious at the news. Suda realized they had not heard about the decision; he was an important curator they respected. They felt blindsided. \u201cThey understandably need to feel that decisions like this are made in consultation with them,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was Ellen\u2019s job to keep the significant players apprised. I didn\u2019t know I couldn\u2019t count on her to work the back channels.\u201d (Basualdo now serves as director of the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.)<\/p>\n

Board member and philanthropist Sheldon Bonovitz, chairman emeritus at law firm Duane Morris, was so incensed that he demanded a vote then and there, Suda says, on whether she should stay or go. It didn\u2019t happen \u2014 it certainly wasn\u2019t protocol, anyway. But it was clear that neither Caplan nor Suda had anticipated the depth of the board\u2019s anger.<\/p>\n

\"philadelphia<\/p>\n

Sasha Suda at the Art Museum in 2024 \/ Photograph by Jauhien Sasnou<\/p>\n

In subsequent days, Suda says, Caplan repeatedly told her how she had defended Suda to the board in a separate executive session. But she seemed \u201con edge,\u201d says Suda, on a trip Suda took that included Caplan and Caplan\u2019s husband (among other board members) that same month to visit museums in Korea. Caplan said defending Suda was difficult, the meeting was a disaster, and Suda had failed her \u2014 denying, Suda says, that they had discussed the problems with Basualdo well before the meeting. Suda had failed everyone, Caplan told her.<\/p>\n

Plus, she and her husband hated the Korea trip, Suda recalls Caplan saying. They told Suda it was \u201cboring.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then came last fall\u2019s rebranding of the museum<\/a>, something Suda says began \u201cin conversations with Leslie Miller when I started, to reset the institution, to present it as a new chapter in the organization\u2019s long history.\u201d<\/p>\n

The institution\u2019s name was changed from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the Philadelphia Art Museum. There was a new logo, too: A huge griffin inside the columns at the front entrance, with one word \u2014 PHILADELPHIA \u2014 encircling the top of it, which aimed to connect the majesty of the museum with the notion that the museum is ours; it belongs to the public. When the $250,000-plus rebrand rolled out in October, the response was mostly negative: Why spend so much money on that, and why had the museum used a New York design firm, and why didn\u2019t anybody see how the name would be shortened, Philly style, into a loud \u2026 PhArt? Ouch.<\/p>\n

Some on the museum board told me they loved the rebrand, though board member Jerry Wind told the Inquirer<\/a>, in what seems to be a rolling complaint about being kept in the dark, that when it was launched, \u201cwe were as surprised as everyone else.\u201d Which, Suda says, is ridiculous, given myriad board briefings and that Suda herself traveled to Caplan\u2019s vacation home in Nantucket last summer to present a full rollout. While some media accounts of Suda\u2019s firing point to the rebranding as a contributing factor, not one of the 30 people I spoke to sees anything in that. It was just noise.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

By the middle of last year, relations between Suda and the board had so devolved that Caplan would take a vote of the executive committee on whether to fire Suda. The vote went eight to two in favor of Suda staying. Then Caplan hired an outside firm to do an investigation into museum finances, especially whether Suda had given herself pay raises that the board hadn\u2019t approved. Suda had received, over two years, about $39,000 in additional pay, in what she says were three percent cost-of-living raises that she was due. Not so, says the museum\u2019s response to Suda\u2019s complaint, and that\u2019s the heart of the museum\u2019s legal argument<\/a>: that Suda gave herself raises \u2014 and then lied about it to the board.<\/p>\n

Suda\u2019s lawyer, Luke Nikas, shares documents that appear to support Suda\u2019s version of events: A report by a firm the board commissioned to analyze museum finances in 2024 lists Suda\u2019s salary as $734,400, which reflects part of the cost-of-living raises. Suda\u2019s complaint<\/a> also notes that in her first year at the museum, Suda declined the pay increase because of the museum\u2019s deficit. The following year, the CFO applied the three percent cost-of-living adjustment. The adjustment \u2014 that $39K, over two years \u2014 was \u201cprocessed through payroll, approved by finance, and included in the budget. It was also published in the institution\u2019s 990 tax form, which was seen by the organization\u2019s compensation committee and was fully transparent in its application.\u201d<\/p>\n

So the board (if it was paying attention) had knowledge of her income. Suda\u2019s point is that she wasn\u2019t hiding anything.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s this email exchange, between museum CFO Katherine Harper and HR head Meredith Clayton on March 17, 2023:<\/p>\n

I was just trying to figure out what increase Sasha might be entitled to in FY24. I will budget her with a 3% increase in September 2024 \u2014 [2 years] from her arrival. Prior to finalizing I will check with [head of the finance committee] John Alchin or Leslie [Miller] to make sure they are comfortable. Ok for you? Thanks, Kathy<\/p>\n

That same afternoon, Clayton answered:<\/p>\n

Hi Kathy, Sounds good to me! Thank you! Meredith<\/p>\n

Did Harper make that call to John Alchin or Leslie Miller? I don\u2019t know. (Neither responded to request for comment.) But this exchange seems to undermine the notion that Suda was \u201cself-dealing,\u201d as the museum\u2019s complaint alleges, and operating in the dark to steal money.<\/p>\n

On the Saturday after she was given the option to resign or be fired for cause, Suda says, board member Ira Brind (who didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment) called Suda. He said he was upset both by how her tenure was ending and that the museum had called the law firm handling her green card status, notifying them that she no longer worked at the museum. Suda\u2019s lawsuit alleges that this would potentially force her to leave the country within 60 days.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of Suda\u2019s firing, Cohen is angry, as are many other people. One board member, Connie Williams, resigned in protest \u2014 and withdrew the substantial financial donation she had pledged to the museum. Others are taking a wait-and-see approach. One member says the full board has yet to see the report that details Suda\u2019s alleged offenses. Cohen, for his part, concedes that Suda\u2019s strength is art, not management, not the business side. But it\u2019s a board\u2019s responsibility to give help, to mentor, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Philadelphia Museum of Art,\u201d he says, \u201chad the potential to smooth out any administrative or managerial rough edges that their young leader, a world-class professional, brought to the table, which would have made her the whole package. And they didn\u2019t do that.\u201d Nor, says Cohen, did board leadership understand or respect the relative roles of a board versus management.<\/p>\n

Brian Allen, a former museum director who skewered Suda\u2019s firing in a piece for The National Review (which characterized it as \u201ca catfight in a snake pit\u201d<\/a>), said in a text that the process comes at a cost: \u201cWhat\u2019s happened is very embarrassing, will give donors pause, and, of course, with the fiasco-making trustees in place, who knows what they\u2019ll do next?\u201d (Though Allen also skewered Suda in his piece for being young, woke, and Canadian.)<\/p>\n

Which is presumably why the museum just hired calm-the-waters Daniel Weiss as director and CEO<\/a>, through 2028. Weiss, 68, the former president of Haverford College, went on to lead the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for eight years. Strangely, it was Suda herself who brought him to Philly\u2019s museum in the fall of 2023, to give her guidance on governance. But by last June, she sensed him \u201cpulling away\u201d from her. (Weiss did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw him at a retirement for a director in Boston,\u201d she says, \u201cand he was distant. He said, \u2018How are things going?\u2019 I said, \u2018Look, it\u2019s really complex,\u2019 and he said, \u2018You have the most complex board in the field. People think that they have tough boards. Your board is really tough.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Weiss, it seems, is exactly what some board members truly wanted: a well-credentialed, safe choice \u2014 someone more of the (older white male) establishment \u2014 to run the place. As a longtime board member who had stopped coming to meetings but has become reengaged by the current crisis tells me, \u201cI just want to move on, and I think we\u2019ve got the right guy.\u201d Meaning the one who will get everything back, this board member hopes, to business as usual, never mind a potential retreat from opening up the museum to new kinds of exhibits and visitors, with a new presence in the city.<\/p>\n

It used to be a common complaint, going back a few decades now, that all the so-called power players in Philly could do was fight over the scraps left in a once-great city in decline. The scandal at the Art Museum turns that complaint a different way, as the city looks to lead the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence this year: We do have a great museum, with a world-class collection of art, as Suda so readily recognized the first time she laid eyes on it. So why do we run it as if we\u2019re fighting over the scraps?<\/p>\n

And therein lies the ultimate failure of the board. In the end, and all along the way, they had every right to fire Suda, if they saw fit. But in how they operated \u2014 undisciplined, threatening, fomenting combativeness rather than collaboration between the board and the new head, seemingly set on retaining control \u2014 they failed her. And worse, they failed the city their institution is meant to serve. It has played out as a blood sport.<\/p>\n

For her part, Sasha Suda will survive. At the end of my second interview with her, she suddenly stops talking because a pop-up on her laptop has announced the death, at 96, of Frank Gehry, the iconoclastic architect and visionary behind the museum\u2019s massive, gorgeous 2021 renovation. Suda seems to tear up. In the five hours we have spoken, this is the first time she appears upset.<\/p>\n

Early on, in the first days and weeks after her firing, people who had worked with her, who had gotten close to her, would go to Suda\u2019s home to offer comfort \u2014 she took the firing hard. She seems to be coming out of that now. But the tawdry scandal of her exit, and what it might do to the city\u2019s standing, in the arts world and beyond \u2014 that\u2019s what will remain, what we are all now left to grapple with.<\/p>\n

Published as \u201cThe Art of the Takedown\u201d in the February 2026 issue of Philadelphia magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Longform The exclusive story behind the brutal ouster of Sasha Suda and the new civil war at Philadelphia\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-397799","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}