Two years after confronting sexual harassment allegations in public, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has elected its new leader: Sasha Suda, the current director and chief executive of the National Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa, Ontario.
Leslie Anne Miller, the museum’s president, praised her educational and work experience, saying in an interview on Tuesday that Suda was “the right person for the institution at this time in its history.”
“We hope her gender will be seen through our lens, which is symbolic of the institution’s continued commitment to advancing DEI in everything we do,” Miller continued, referring to the museum’s focus on diversity, equality and inclusion . “Sasha understands how critical it is to build on our efforts to date to reach out to and engage with the community through the exhibits.”
Suda, 41, who will start in September as the 14th director and chief executive, will take over a 145-year-old institution that is still healing from controversy. In 2020, a New York Times report revealed that a young male manager had been accused of assaulting several women on the staff. Government officials criticized the museum; unionized workers, citing gender and equality issues; and the museum’s former director, Timothy Rub, apologized to his staff. Rub finally announced his resignation last summer after serving 13 years.
At the National Gallery, where she was appointed in February 2019, Suda focused on justice and equity with a commitment to reconciliation with indigenous peoples.
“I have a passion for people-centered leadership and am really interested in building that strength so that people can see the value of the work they do and the value of their own experience – where managers and leaders leave room for inconvenience and much needed conversations,” Suda said in a telephone interview.
“That’s really what this moment is about for me as a leader,” she continued, “to come into those conversations with a willingness to make room and be there for them and have eyes wide open.”
She added that the Philadelphia Museum — known for its collection of some 240,000 works of art, including those by Brancusi, Duchamp, Rodin, and Jasper Johns (as well as the signature staircases at the front, featured in the movie “Rocky”) — has long since one of her favorites. “I used to get lost in the galleries,” Suda said. “It’s just one of the few places where you can just stop and enjoy art in a museum in the best way.”
At a time when cultural institutions seek to diversify their staffs, boards, collections and programming, some will doubtless question the museum’s decision not to appoint a person of color. In February, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art replaced its longtime leader, Neal Benezra, with Christopher Bedford, the director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, who is white.
But Miller said Suda was the most qualified person, adding that the museum had “cast the widest net possible to attract the most diverse pool of candidates.”
Miller also cited Suda’s communication skills as paramount to the institution. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has been widely blamed by current and former staffers for failing to openly address the issues of a former education manager, Joshua Helmer, who emerged as director of the Erie Art Museum before being forced to quit his job there. the New York Times report.
Helmer has declined to discuss accounts of his treatment of women or his relationships with them, though he said he always followed museum policy.
Born in Toronto to Czech parents, Suda received her bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, her master’s degree in art history from Williams College and her Ph.D. at New York University. She began her career in the Medieval Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she held various roles between 2003 and 2011.
She then returned to Canada as an assistant curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where she eventually became the curator of European art and then chair of prints and drawings.
Suda becomes the third female director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Anne d’Harnoncourt was director and general manager from 1982 until her death in 2008; Jean Sutherland Boggs, who previously ran the National Gallery of Canada, was director of the Philadelphia Museum from 1978 to 1982.
Like cultural institutions around the world, the Philadelphia Museum is struggling to recover from the pandemic, which has required staffing and budget cuts. The museum currently has an operating budget of $62 million and is nearing completion of a fundraiser that will bring the donation to $560 million.
Last year, the museum completed the first part of a Frank Gehry-designed renovation and expansion.
But the main priority seems to be restoring his public status and his internal health; following a ‘cultural assessment’ in 2020, the museum has committed additional resources to key areas in need of restoration. “The institution has not run away from its problems; we faced them,” Miller said. “We are working on efforts to improve communication and transparency.
“Have we solved the problems? Absolutely not,” she added. “Are we committed to working on it? Absolutely.
“This is a new chapter in a new world,” she continued. “We have to think outside the box. We cannot go back to what was then. This is now.”
