{"id":175033,"date":"2025-11-11T14:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T14:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/175033\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T14:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T14:03:09","slug":"former-national-gallery-director-sasha-suda-sues-philadelphia-art-museum-over-dismissal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/175033\/","title":{"rendered":"Former National Gallery director Sasha Suda sues Philadelphia Art Museum over dismissal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Sasha Suda joined the Philadelphia Art Museum in 2022 on a five-year contract.CAROLINE GUTMAN\/The New York Times News Service<\/p>\n

Canadian curator Sasha Suda has filed a lawsuit against the Philadelphia Art Museum over her dismissal as its director and chief executive, arguing that she was terminated after a \u201csham investigation\u201d and resistance from board members as she tried to transform the institution.<\/p>\n

Ms. Suda joined the museum in 2022<\/a> on a five-year contract after departing her role as director and CEO of the National Gallery of Canada, a post that she took up in 2019. The suit, filed Monday in a Pennsylvania state court, alleges that Ms. Suda\u2019s \u201cefforts to modernize the museum clashed with a small, corrupt, and unethical faction of the Board intent on preserving the status quo.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lawsuit alleges that the Philadelphia Art Museum\u2019s board promised Ms. Suda upon hiring that she would have the authority to \u201cmake necessary, difficult decisions,\u201d and that its members \u201cwere ready to embrace change and would support her vision to bring the Museum to life.\u201d Instead, the filing continues, \u201cSuda encountered entrenched resistance at every turn,\u201d arguing that some board members \u201cinterfered in staffing, programming, exhibition planning, and even the smallest details of administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the relationship deteriorated and board members sought Ms. Suda\u2019s exit, the lawsuit says, she was terminated<\/a> \u201c\u2018for cause\u2019 without a valid basis.\u201d It says that the termination did not have grounds for cause, which prevented her from collecting the equivalent of two years\u2019 pay in severance. The filing says the termination also puts into disarray Ms. Suda\u2019s ability to remain in the United States, where her family now lives, because its terms interfere with a coming interview for permanent residency. <\/p>\n

The terms she received, her lawsuit argues, were inferior to those given to a male former CEO and other \u201cmale individuals who were pushed out of the Museum for engaging in actual wrongdoing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Suda, shown in 2019 at the National Gallery of Canada, alleges in the lawsuit that she faced resistance from board members in her efforts to transform the Philadelphia Art Museum.Justin Tang\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

The former CEO has asked for a jury trial, seeking damages and other relief in an amount to be determined over its course.<\/p>\n

The museum\u2019s press office said in an e-mailed statement that it is aware of the complaint, but said it was without merit and declined to comment further. <\/p>\n

Ms. Suda\u2019s lawyer, Luke Nikas of the firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP in New York, said that \u201cMs. Suda fought for and believed in a museum that would serve Philadelphia and its people, not the egos of a handful of trustees. She is proud of her work and looks forward to presenting the truth.\u201d <\/p>\n

The CEO undertook numerous programming and equity measures, including the establishment of the Brind Center for African and African Diasporic Art. The lawsuit says Ms. Suda deepened the art museum\u2019s connections to local schools and cut the US$6-million deficit by two-thirds. <\/p>\n

She had also recently overseen a museum rebranding that simplified its name to the Philadelphia Art Museum from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which led to social media mockery where the acronym PhAM was changed to <\/b>PhART. <\/p>\n

After a dispute connected to duelling events with Philadelphia\u2019s city council president and the museum\u2019s largest corporate donor, Bank of America, the lawsuit says that Ms. Suda began to believe the museum\u2019s chair was setting the stage for her dismissal. <\/p>\n

The lawsuit outlines a subsequent investigation that studied Ms. Suda\u2019s expenses including travel costs and club memberships, and claims that \u201cdespite finding no actual misconduct,\u201d investigators \u201ccharacterized Suda as financially irresponsible and recommended that she be given the opportunity to resign.\u201d<\/p>\n

The proposed terms of the resignation, Ms. Suda\u2019s lawyers argue, was a breach of her employment agreement. \u201cThe Museum had orchestrated a sham investigation of Suda, which did not give Suda an adequate opportunity to defend herself and reached false conclusions about her tenure at the Museum,\u201d the lawsuit says. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Sasha Suda joined the Philadelphia Art Museum in 2022 on a five-year contract.CAROLINE…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[4320,365,362,4309,363,364,4321,9,4302,4322,995,4301,4314,4315,4311,4303,4300,366,179,2597,18,117,440,4313,4307,4333,4304,4305,3428,19,17,4310,3521,3136,4323,4306,4328,4329,4331,4326,4330,4324,4327,430,4317,4318,790,4316,4325,4308,82,4319,4312,4222,66,4332],"class_list":{"0":"post-175033","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-arts-news","12":"tag-artsanddesign","13":"tag-artsdesign","14":"tag-bc","15":"tag-breaking-news","16":"tag-breaking-news-video","17":"tag-british-columbia","18":"tag-canada","19":"tag-canada-news","20":"tag-canada-sports","21":"tag-canada-sports-news","22":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","23":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","24":"tag-canadian-news","25":"tag-design","26":"tag-economy","27":"tag-education","28":"tag-eire","29":"tag-entertainment","30":"tag-environment","31":"tag-federal-government","32":"tag-foreign-news","33":"tag-globe-and-mail","34":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","35":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","36":"tag-government","37":"tag-ie","38":"tag-ireland","39":"tag-life-news","40":"tag-lifestyle","41":"tag-local-news","42":"tag-manitoba","43":"tag-national-news","44":"tag-new-brunswick","45":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","46":"tag-northwest-territories","47":"tag-nova-scotia","48":"tag-nunavut","49":"tag-ontario","50":"tag-pei","51":"tag-photos","52":"tag-political-news","53":"tag-political-opinion","54":"tag-politics","55":"tag-politics-news","56":"tag-quebec","57":"tag-sports-news","58":"tag-technology","59":"tag-travel","60":"tag-trudeau","61":"tag-us-news","62":"tag-world-news","63":"tag-yukon"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}