Barnes Begins Architect Search, Advised by Pritzker's Executive Director

The Barnes Foundation has officially begun its search for an architect to design its planned new facility in Philadelphia. It appointed Martha Thorne, executive director of the $100,000 Pritzker Prize, the world's most prestigious architectural award, to advise in the selection process for the 120,000-square-foot megaBarnes. Thorne was previously associate curator and acting head of the architecture department at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Should the administrator who helps to award the coveted Pritzker medal (above) also be involved in awarding a lucrative (and controversial) architectural commission?

A "request for qualifications" has gone out to "an extensive group of leading national and international architecture firms," the Barnes announced yesterday. More details on the contents of the letter sent to architects can be found in Skyline Online, the blog of Inga Saffron, architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

According to the Barnes' press release, the chosen architect will have "to replicate the scale, proportion and configuration of the existing galleries" within the greatly expanded and repurposed facility. This replication, the Barnes asserts, will enable the institution "to remain true to its purpose and character."

I trust that no intelligent architect actually believes this. Whatever one may say about the desirability of the Philly move, engulfing the intimate Barnes galleries in a large modern facility will utterly change its "purpose and character" from what Albert Barnes had envisioned and created.

According to the press release:

The Foundation plans to review the responses in April, select a short list later in the spring and announce its selection by August 1, 2007. Design will begin immediately, and the site will be prepared from the end of 2007. Construction will start on completion of design work.

Time magazine art and architecture critic Richard Lacayo visited the Barnes last Friday. Here is his outraged response to the proposed move, posted yesterday on his blog, Looking Around:

It simply will not be possible to "recreate" the Barnes in a much larger new building on Ben Franklin Parkway, any more than the Dulwich Picture Gallery outside London could be stuffed into the Great Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. In an era of big box museums, the Barnes is the ultimate jewel box. The financial problems of the Foundation are real, but the snatch-and-grab solution of relocating the collection to Philadelphia is no solution at all. It isn't salvation. It isn't even euthanasia. It's death by disembowelment.

This puts him in the same camp with the doyenne of architecture criticism, Ada Louise Huxtable and blogger-come-lately CultureGrrl.

Great minds think alike?