Philadelphia Art Museum accuses Sasha Suda of ‘theft’ in new filing

The Philadelphia Art Museum’s trustees fired back at a lawsuit filed by recently ousted director and CEO Sasha Suda, saying she was dismissed after an investigation determined that she “misappropriated funds from the museum and lied to cover up her theft.”

In Thursday’s filing with the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, the museum said that Suda repeatedly asked for raises, and when she was denied them by the museum board’s compensation committee, she took matters into her own hands.

“Suda took the money anyway,” the petition alleges, defying the board and violating her contract.

“Given Suda’s misconduct, no responsible board member could have done anything other than vote to remove Suda for cause,” says the petition, which asks the court to compel arbitration of the dispute. Suda had requested a trial by jury.

Suda was fired Nov. 4 for what the museum at the time called cause, and she filed her wrongful-dismissal suit less than a week later.

“The museum’s accusations are false,” Suda’s lawyer, Luke Nikas of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan said Friday.

“The motion, as well as its false narrative, fits the Philadelphia museum’s longstanding pattern of trying to cover up its misconduct and mistreatment of staff. We expected the museum would prefer to hide the sordid details about its unlawful treatment of Sasha Suda in a confidential arbitration. If the museum had nothing to hide, it would not be afraid to litigate in state court where we filed the case.”

The money in question came as increases to Suda’s compensation, and these increases were “authorized” and “budgeted” cost-of-living increases that were “fully approved” and “disclosed,” and amounted to about $39,000 over two years, a source close to Suda stated previously.

Another source with knowledge of the petition said the raises mentioned in the petition are, in fact, the same as the cost-of-living adjustment the first source refers to.

Suda was in the third year of a five-year contract when she was dismissed.

The museum on Friday named Daniel H. Weiss, a veteran leader of nonprofits, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to be its new director and CEO.

Thursday’s court filing by the museum said that the board formed a seven-member special committee after documents showed that Suda was “receiving far more than the $720,000 in annual base salary” authorized by her contract.

According to the petition, the special committee “was authorized to investigate issues including whether Suda had engaged in self-dealing by increasing her annual base salary and engaged in any improprieties with respect to her museum-related expenses.”

The special committee hired law firm Kirkland & Ellis to conduct an investigation, which interviewed 20 current and former museum board members and employees.

Suda was among those interviewed, and during that interview, she “lied about her actions, claiming, among other things, that her subordinates had advised her that she was entitled to receive these increases,” the court filing says.

The special committee met with Kirkland & Ellis in October to review the evidence, and, as stated by the filing, the museum’s “executive committee determined that the evidence overwhelmingly established that Suda violated her agreement by misappropriating museum funds and engaging in repeated acts of dishonesty.”

The petition alleges that Suda requested, and was denied, a salary increase from the compensation committee on Feb. 8, 2024. She then “awarded herself the salary increase” effective March 1, 2024, followed by a second “unauthorized” increase in July of that year. In July 2025, Suda “awarded herself a third unauthorized pay increase, which she once again failed to disclose to the board,” according to the museum’s petition.

Suda, in her complaint, claims she was “terminated when her efforts to modernize the museum clashed with a small, corrupt, and unethical faction of the board intent on preserving the status quo.”

She seeks two years’ salary plus damages.

Thursday’s response from the museum said her complaint was “laden with false, dishonest, and irrelevant allegations.”

Inquirer staff writer Abraham Gutman contributed to this article.