Endowed by museum trustee Ira Brind, the new center will help The Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibit and expand its collection of “under-programmed” art from Africa and its diaspora.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art has about a quarter-million objects in its collection, of which about 1,400 are associated with Black artists and the African continent.
The Brind Center for African and African Diasporic Art — named after Ira Brind, a museum trustee — will create two new staff curator positions which will develop and expand the collection and its programming centered on Black art.
The Brind Center for African and African Diasporic Art will broaden PMA’s curatorial lens and make the institution a more well-rounded hub for art history, Brind says in an article published by ArtForum.
“I am thrilled to support a dynamic field of art history that has important connections to the city of Philadelphia and the global art world,” said Brind. “The stories we tell through art, and the diversity of our collection, matter. I am particularly excited to share the collection and its history with the area’s diverse population.”
Sasha Suda, director and CEO of the Art Museum, said Brind’s gift demonstrates his dedication to making the organization a more “inclusive collecting and programming institution.” It’s a vision he’s had for some time.
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“Brindcame to me with this idea on the fourth day of my time here as something that he’d been long wanting to do,” said Suda, who was appointed museum director in June 2022.
The establishment of the center will allow the PMA to widen its curatorial scope and will allow it to present a fuller picture of art history. “The missing continent from within our curatorial structure was Africa, and the stories and artistic production from the African diaspora,” PMA director and chief executive Sasha Suda told the New York Times. “Almost half of our population identifies as African American.”
“There is a lack of Africa in the museum—it was always my goal to help fill it,” Brind told the paper. “It’s a passion of mine that I’ve been collecting and always intended to try to share.”
Although the launch of the center has not yet been announced, Suda informed the Philadelphia Inquirer that the search for a curatorial director and assistant curator would start soon. In conjunction with the establishment of the center, the museum will also set up a fellowship program to educate graduate students in the study of African and African Diasporan art.
The museum’s current collection of art from Africa and the African diaspora, which has been meticulously stored but mostly “under-programmed” in the past, will be able to grow with Brind’s help, according to Suda.
The museum will host gallery installations, special exhibitions, community programming, and other events inside the dedicated gallery space in addition to incorporating artifacts and contemporary art pieces.
“It’s an amazing sign for what the future holds for the PMA,” Suda said. “I think that it demonstrates how committed our family of PMA supporters are to really serve the city of Philadelphia and being true to the idea that we’re an encyclopedia institution.”
About Ira Brind
Ira Brind, a Philadelphia native, has had a relationship with the museum since childhood. He was elected as a museum Trustee in 2006 and serves on its committees for Architecture and Facilities, South Asian Art, Executive, Finance, Investment, and Governance. He has maintained longstanding interests, shared with his late wife, Myrna, in collecting Asian and African and Diasporic art and has made many gifts of works of art (to PMA and other museums) over the years. In 2014, together with his wife Stacey Spector, he endowed the position of Associate Curator of South Asian Art.
Ira Brind is President and founder of Brind Investments, Inc., an investment and private equity firm. He is the past Chair of the Jefferson Health System, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, and the Wistar Institute. In addition to PMA, he continues to serve on the Boards of Opera Philadelphia, the University of the Arts (Life Trustee), Thomas Jefferson University (Trustee Emeritus), The Wistar Institute, and the Young Scholars Academy.
About Sasha Suda
Born in Toronto to Czech parents, she studied at Princeton University before completing her Master’s degree in art history at Williams College and her PhD at New York University. Her professional career began at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where she worked in various roles in the Medieval Department between 2003 and 2011. She returned to her native Toronto to work at the Art Gallery of Ontario, first as an assistant curator, and eventually as Curator of European Art and the Elliott Chair of Prints & Drawings. In these roles, she led major international exhibition projects and spearheaded innovative digital initiatives that presented historical art to audiences in a new light. From 2019 until 2022, she served as director and CEO of the National Gallery of Canada where she led the revitalization of its purpose, vision, and mission and first-ever strategic planning process, leading to advances in digital rebranding, exhibition planning, and external stakeholder engagement, with a focus on justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility.
About The Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art—in partnership with the city, the region, and art museums around the globe—seeks to preserve, enhance, interpret, and extend the reach of its great collections in particular, and the visual arts in general, to an increasing and increasingly diverse audience as a source of delight, illumination, and lifelong learning.
