{"id":941727,"date":"2026-05-06T14:42:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T14:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/941727\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T14:42:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T14:42:23","slug":"brandywine-conservancy-and-museum-picks-architects-for-100m-expansion-project-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/941727\/","title":{"rendered":"Brandywine Conservancy and Museum picks architects for $100m expansion project – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art<\/a> in rural Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania\u2014both an organisation devoted to American art and a land trust founded in 1967\u2014has selected the architecture firm Kengo Kuma & Associates, in partnership with the landscape architects Field Operations and Schwartz Silver Architects, to transform its 15-acre campus into a 325-acre public preserve and garden anchored by two museum buildings.<\/p>\n

The estimated $100m project includes construction of a new freestanding 40,000-sq.-ft museum building, expected to break ground next spring and open in autumn of 2029, and renovation of its existing museum, a converted 19th-century grist mill along the Brandywine Creek. A new system of walking trails, to be introduced to land owned by Brandywine but not previously accessible to the public, will connect the two museum buildings in a bucolic ten-mile loop with the original studios of the artists N.C. Wyeth and Andrew Wyeth\u2014two titans of the prominent artist family that has lived and worked in the Brandywine Valley for 130 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe love the idea that visitors will be able to see works by the Wyeth family hanging in the gallery and then just walk over to where a lot of that art was created,\u201d Thomas Padon, the director of the Brandywine Museum of Art, tells The Art Newspaper. The two historic studios, gifts to Brandywine from the Wyeths, are currently open by reservation only and via shuttle bus.<\/p>\n

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Site plan of the coming Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art expansion Courtesy of Kengo Kuma & Associates and Field Operations<\/p>\n

To date, Brandywine has raised almost 50% of the project’s estimated cost, including contributions from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art and individual Wyeth family members.<\/p>\n

Sited on a wooded hillside ten minutes by foot from the current museum, Kengo Kuma’s new building is the Tokyo-based partnership\u2019s first art museum designed for the US. It is envisioned as a group of four shed-like pavilions clad in wood and flanking a long central entrance space that yields expansive views of the nature preserve in three directions. From there, visitors will be able explore the adjoining gallery pavilions showcasing the collection rich in landscape, still life, illustration and unparalleled holdings of three generations of Wyeths\u2014including N.C., who bought land in the area with earnings from his successful career as an illustrator, and his children Andrew, Carolyn and Henriette and grandson Jamie.<\/p>\n

Brandywine’s \u201cmission was so clear connecting landscape and artwork that, for us, it was a missed opportunity if we didn\u2019t put the landscape experience first\u201d, says Bal\u00e1zs Bogn\u00e1r, Kengo Kuma\u2019s partner in charge of the project. His design team found inspiration in a dirt path that Wyeth family members long used to wander through the landscape from the meadows up to the new museum location (this route is preserved untouched in their plan). \u201cWe felt this project was not just a physical building but an entire art terrain visitors are coming through,\u201d Bogn\u00e1r says.<\/p>\n

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Exterior rendering of the new museum building at the Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art Courtesy of Kengo Kuma & Associates and Field Operations<\/p>\n

Kengo Kuma was chosen from a pool of 32 architecture firms initially approached, then winnowed to six teams invited to submit full proposals and three finalists for half-day interviews. As a springboard for that dialogue, the design team (including Field Operations and Schwartz Silver) laid out a 15ft-long still life of natural materials they had collected on site, including a couple of railroad spikes. \u201cTheir approach and dynamic led the selection committee to a very quick unanimous decision,\u201d says Virginia Logan, the executive director and chief executive of Brandywine, confident that Kengo Kuma would \u201ccreate the museum building we need, in complete harmony with its surroundings but also reflective of our organizational identity\u201d.<\/p>\n

Brandywine aims to increase its current annual attendance of almost 100,000 by at least 20% when the expansion is completed.<\/p>\n

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The existing museum building at the Brandywine Conservancy and Museum Photo by Tom Crane<\/p>\n

The new building will provide 14,000 sq. ft of flexible galleries. A large space dedicated to landscape will show that collection in depth for the first time, spanning 19th-century figures like Albert Bierstadt and Martin Johnson Heade to contemporary artists such as Dawoud Bey, Wolf Kahn and James Welling. Another substantial space will group all five Wyeth artists in intergenerational conversation, with a smaller gallery spotlighting Andrew\u2014best known for his 1948 painting Christina\u2019s World<\/a> in the Museum of Modern Art\u2019s collection in New York\u2014to be relocated from the mill building.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a seismic opportunity for us to really show the strengths of our collection,\u201d say Padon, who is excited as well to have two new special exhibition galleries to foster collaborations with other museums. In the mill building, with another 5,500 sq. ft of galleries, an additional space will be converted to highlight Brandywine’s conservation work.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want people to understand that the Brandywine has these two sides,\u201d he says. \u201cThat gallery and a lot of the moments that you\u2019ll have walking on the trails will begin to make the conservancy more visible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art in rural Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania\u2014both an organisation devoted to American art…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":941728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[263013,4021,4020,263012,80071,4022,77,15696,4842,4342,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-941727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-andrew-wyeth","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-brandywine-conservancy-museum-of-art","12":"tag-building-projects","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-kengo-kuma","16":"tag-museums-heritage","17":"tag-pennsylvania","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116528162333301142","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/941728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}