The Barnes Foundation’s long and fitful quest to build a new art gallery for itself in Philadelphia marked a new chapter today with the announcement that its trustees, in a unanimous vote, selected architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. The Manhattan-based husband and wife team prevailed over a field of six semi-finalists in a two-stage competition.
Williams and Tsien have their work cut out for them. The Barnes has occupied a 10,000-square-foot, Classical-style structure designed by Paul Cret, set amid a 12-acre arboretum in suburban Merion, Pennsylvania, since 1922. Its namesake, Dr. Albert C. Barnes, specified that his collection of Impressionist paintings and other art works must remain intact and hung exactly as he specified. A judge ruled in 2004 that the Barnes could move as long as a new building maintained the scale, proportions, and hang of the original galleries.
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