The arrival of the Barnes Foundation in its new quarters on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway promises to further Philadelphia's identity as an artistic magnet.
Sandwiched between Washington, the capital, and New York, the center of culture, commerce, and media, Philadelphia has long had an inferiority complex. But the city's recent addition of nearly 90,000 people since 2006, ending a population free fall since 1950, attests to Philadelphia's comeback. It wasn't easy, or without controversy.
This is the Year of the Museum for Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. While the firm’s new Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia is preparing for a late May opening, and its Asia Society Hong Kong Center opened in February, the New York firm was just selected by the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, to undertake a major expansion and renovation of its 1985 structure.
The Barnes Foundation’s long and often contentious effort to relocate its highly regarded art collection to the Center City district in Philadelphia will reach a new milestone this weekend with the closure of its Merion, Pennsylvania galleries.
New York City’s American Folk Art Museum, designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Architects and completed in 2001, has been sold to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) next door.
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.
Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the husband-and-wife team based in New York City, bested a who’s-who roster of competitors to design a new arts center for the University of Chicago, the school announced last week.
Less than two months after issuing a request for qualifications, as ArchRecord.com reported on March 19, the Barnes Foundation today revealed its shortlist of architects for a new museum and educational facility on Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia.
