Less than three weeks after the board of the Philadelphia Art Museum (PAM) fired its director and chief executive of three years, Sasha Suda, the museum has selected Daniel H. Weiss to replace her. Suda is currently suing the museum, alleging unfair treatment and abuse, among other claims.
Weiss, who was the director and chief executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 2015 to 2023, has spent the past two years as a professor and adviser at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He starts at the PAM on 1 December and will remain in the role until at least 2028.
“We are extraordinarily fortunate to have someone of Dan Weiss’s calibre and experience step into this critical role,” Ellen Caplan, the chair of the PAM’s board of trustees, said in a statement. “Dan’s proven track record of museum leadership, his deep understanding of the field and his ability to navigate complex institutional challenges make him ideally suited to provide stability and strategic direction during this critical period for the art museum.”
Caplan is among the leaders at the PAM whom Suda claims in her lawsuit sought to create a pretext to fire her. Her lawsuit also claims that Weiss, a governance consultant to the museum at the time, called Suda directly and said of the PAM’s leadership: “It is a very dysfunctional board.”
At the time Suda filed her lawsuit, a spokesperson for the PAM told The Art Newspaper in a statement: “The Art Museum is aware of the recently filed complaint against the museum, and we believe it is without merit. We will not be providing further comment at this time.”
Weiss was appointed president of the Met in 2015 and took on the title of chief executive two years later. He also served as the museum's interim director following the sudden resignation of Thomas Campbell in 2017. His time at the Met was marked by major changes at the institution, including navigating the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and its multiple shutdowns, the repatriation of artefacts to Nigeria, Egypt and elsewhere—and efforts to overhaul the institution’s provenance research—capital projects including the renovation of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing and protests calling on the museum to refuse funds from members of the Sackler family due to the role of their company Purdue Pharma in the opioid crisis (in 2021, the museum removed the Sackler name from its galleries).
Prior to his tenure at the Met, Weiss was the president of Haverford College in Pennsylvania from 2013 to 2015. Before that he served as president of Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, from 2005 to 2013.
“The Philadelphia Art Museum is one of America’s great cultural treasures, with an extraordinary collection, a dedicated staff and deep connections to its community,” Weiss said in a statement. “It is a privilege and an honour to serve during this important moment, and I look forward to working with the board, staff and stakeholders to ensure the art museum continues its vital mission and advances its strategic priorities.”
