Former Philadelphia Museum of Art finance chief sues over US$144,691.60 in severance

Valarie McDuffie, the former chief financial officer of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is suing the museum for US$144,691.60 in severance pay that she says it promised and has not paid. Severance is money an employer agrees to pay when a job ends. ArtNews reported the case.

McDuffie filed her complaint in May with the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia, a state trial court. She accuses the museum's director and chief executive, Daniel H. Weiss, and the board chair, Ellen Caplan, of withholding the money out of spite and retaliation. She also claims the two are personally liable under Pennsylvania's Wage Payment and Collection Law, a state rule on how workers must be paid, because they controlled the decision.

According to her account, she was told she was being fired around January 16. A severance agreement dated that day was signed by McDuffie and the museum's general counsel, Rebecca Wui, on February 5. It listed March 27 as McDuffie's final day of employment.

The museum's stated reason for holding back the money, as described in the filings, centres on Sasha Suda. Suda was the museum's director and chief executive until she was dismissed in 2025, and she later sued the museum. McDuffie alleges the museum used her supposed failure to cooperate with an internal investigation into Suda's firing as a pretext to withhold severance.

The museum has answered with a counterclaim, a claim filed back against the person who sued it. Filed in July, it says McDuffie factory-reset her museum-issued phone around February 12, her last day of active work. A factory reset wipes a device back to its original settings and deletes what is stored on it.

The museum says general counsel had sent McDuffie a written directive on November 21, 2025, to preserve records linked to Suda's lawsuit, and that she acknowledged it that same night. It also says she used the phone to contact Suda regularly about expenses and about raises the museum says Suda gave herself without board approval. WHYY has reported that Suda allegedly awarded herself three raises, two in 2024 and one in July 2025.

The counterclaim accuses McDuffie of breaking the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a US federal law that bans accessing computers without permission. The museum says the reset exceeded her authorised access and caused more than US$5,000 in damages.

Suda, for her part, has told a court that a "small, corrupt faction of the Board" ran a "sham investigation" and pushed for her resignation. Hyperallergic reported on her lawsuit in 2025. The museum has alleged that Suda misused funds and lied to cover it up, according to 6abc.

McDuffie is asking for the unpaid severance, an extra 25 percent under the wage law, reimbursement for COBRA health insurance premiums (a US program that lets people keep their employer's health cover for a period after leaving, at their own cost), and attorneys' fees. Each side's claims are allegations at this stage. The people named in them are the ones who will decide where the money goes, and what it means for the staff who run the building.