Copyright The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Art Museum has ousted its leader. Sasha Suda, 45, who recently completed the third year in a five-year contract, has been dismissed effective immediately, according to sources inside the museum. Reached Tuesday after an emergency meeting of the museum board, Suda declined to comment. It was unclear who will lead the museum as it presumably begins to prepare a search for its next director. While the reasons for Suda’s dismissal were not immediately clear, several events in the past months have pointed to internal dissent at the museum. One flashpoint emerged recently as some trustees voiced concerns about negative public reaction to museum’s renaming and rebranding and the way the rebrand was rolled out last month, without a final nod from the board. In June, museum leaders said that its prestigious antique, art, and design exhibition and fundraiser, the Philadelphia Show, would be taking a pause in 2026, with its future beyond next year undetermined. Like almost all arts groups, attendance at the museum suffered with the pandemic, but while visitor ship at many institutions has now reached or exceeded pre-pandemic levels, the museum’s numbers have not recovered. Philadelphia’s encyclopedic museum — the steward of more than 240,000 objects spanning 4,000 years — has operated with a deficit for several years, and is projecting another one for the current year. Suda came to Philadelphia from Ottawa, where she had been the youngest director appointed to head the National Gallery of Canada in generations when she took over in 2019. She reported to her first day at work as director and CEO in Philadelphia on Sept. 26, 2022 — the day the museum’s newly organized union workers went on strike. The clash lasted three weeks, but even after it was settled labor tensions persisted. This past summer the museum negotiated a successor contract, which Suda told The Inquirer last month was “probably the thing I’m most proud of with the staff.” During her tenure, the museum finalized plans for a show featuring works from the collection of John and Leigh Middleton and their family. "A Nation of Artists" — called “the most expansive presentation of American art ever mounted in Philadelphia” — is slated to open at both the museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the spring as the city and nation celebrate the semisesquicentennial. Suda had identified a potential Frank Gehry-designed education center at the museum’s north entrance as her next big priority. But other, significant aspects of the museum’s operations and future remain unresolved. The 173,000-square-foot Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, acquired at great cost and opened with ambitious plans in 2007, never reopened to the public after the pandemic. The next phase in an expansion beneath the art museum’s steps remains undone, as is a significant amount of deferred maintenance on the main building. The museum is still operating with a reduced staffing level post-pandemic, and its hours open to the public are lower than its counterparts in cities like Boston, Cleveland and Detroit. The Art Museum’s endowment is underfunded — about half the ideal value for a museum of its size, according to Suda’s own accounting. There were numerous staff departures since Suda’s arrival — in membership, marketing, public relations, development, and on the curatorial staff. The museum about a year ago quietly parted ways with one of its highly regarded ambassadors — contemporary art expert Carlos Basualdo. Basualdo came to the museum in 2005 and was promoted by Suda in 2022 to deputy director and the museum’s first-ever chief curator. He was the museum’s keeper of relationships with collectors as well as major artists like Jasper Johns and Bruce Nauman, and oversaw the Art Museum’s entry in the 2009 Venice Biennale, Bruce Nauman: Topological Gardens, which received the Biennale’s top prize, the Golden Lion. His departure was not announced by the museum.
