Another Barnes Foundation Announcement

The Barnes Foundation continues its march forward: Over the weekend, the foundation's board announced that it had chosen Tod Williams and Billie Tsien to design its new building in Philadelphia. The decision comes on the heels of last week's news that Philadelphia mayor John Street had given the Barnes a long-term lease for a property on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

Inga Saffron writes in the Philadelphia Enquirer:

"The concept, which will certainly require extensive study, would retain the current sequence of galleries — just as the court ordered — but blow out the spaces between the walls. Those new voids could then be turned into landscaped courtyards and gardens that connect the galleries with the natural world and allow some natural light to filter into the spaces."

So the Barnes has got the land and hired the architects. The only thing standing in its way now seems to be the relocation of the juvenile detention center that currently occupies its future home on the parkway. That is, unless the Friends of the Barnes Foundation, a group that opposes the move from suburb to city, is successful in its attempt to persuade a judge in Montgomery County Orphans' Court to reconsider his decision to allow the relocation. If that happens, this six-year legal battle could retreat to square one.