Brandywine Conservancy – ChaddsFordLive.com

Wyeth homestead may open for tours

The Wyeth Foundation is looking to open a part of the Andrew and Betsy Wyeth home on Creek Road to the public for tours. That was the word during the Nov. 3 Birmingham Township Board of Supervisors meeting. No action was taken or needed by the board.

The property is at 1400 Creek Road in Birmingham, and the project is in conjunction with the Brandywine Conservancy. If the project goes through, the granary building would be open for limited tours, possibly beginning in June of 2026.

“The whole project is to restore and serve the property and make it available for guided and selected trips to the site,” said attorney Lou Colagreco.

Laura West, executive director of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, said the foundation is the new owner of the Wyeth home. The property consists of three buildings, with the granary being the building on the left as viewed from Creek Road. The building had to be restored after the flooding from Hurricane Ida in 2021.

“Our purpose is to open the ground floor to tours in conjunction with the Brandywine. They’re considering constructing a footpath and offering limited shuttle service, with no general public parking. We’re restoring the home to tell the general story of the Wyeths,” West said.

The tours will be similar to those given at the Andrew Wyeth and the N.C. Wyeth studios, but on a smaller scale, and limited to a number of days.

West later said they’ll just open the granary ground floor on a short-term based on the run of a planned future exhibit, and then we’ll re-evaluate after we see how individuals react to the site.

Will Coleman, curator for the Wyeth Foundation Curator and Director, Andrew & Betsy Wyeth Study Center said, “What’s really special about this hidden gem, that we call Brinton’s Mill, is that it’s not just another member of the boy’s club. This is Betsey Wyeth’s pride and joy, the power behind the throne, Andrew Wyeth’s creative partner. It was Betsey James Wyeth’s first work of environmental design.”

He said it was her attempt to work with the pre-existing mill and turn it into something personal and special.

Coleman said the timing of the tours is in conjunction with an upcoming exhibit at the Brandywine, By Design: The Worlds of Betsy James Wyeth. That exhibit delves into Betsy Wyeth’s designs of complex environments that left a legacy in the visual arts and landscapes. That is slated to open on June 27, 2026.

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River Museum changes name

Along the Ford

BRM-name-change-3682 — River Museum changes name

There is the age-old question: “What’s in a name?”

For the Brandywine River Museum it’s a matter of being properly known outside the local community. That’s the reason the museum is now called the Brandywine River Museum of Art.

Employees of the newly renamed Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art watch as the new sign is unveiled.

It also has a new tag line, “Presenting Wyeth and American Art.”

The name change was announced Friday, Feb. 7, when the double-sided sign on Route 1 in front of the museum was unveiled.

A large group of employees braved the chilly weather to watch the unveiling and to listen to Virginia Logan, the executive director of the Brandywine Conservancy, explain the rationale for the change.

The conservancy, too, has a slight name change. It’s now the Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art, reflecting both sides of the organization’s mission.

Logan said people outside the region did not recognize the name Brandywine River Museum as an art museum, hence the need for the change.

Conservancy Chairman George A. "Frolic" Weymouth makes his entrance prior to the unveiling. — Conservancy Chairman George A. “Frolic” Weymouth makes his entrance prior to the unveiling.

“We know we have many loyal followers who know us well and love the Brandywine River Museum. But we also did an extensive study and reached out to people, including art patrons in a much broader market throughout the Mid-Atlantic region to find out what they knew about us. We were surprised to learn that, unless they knew us from some prior context, it wasn’t immediately obvious to them, from the name Brandywine River Museum, that we were, indeed, an art museum, let alone that we showcase three generations of masterpieces by Wyeth family artists.” Logan said.

Logan also noted some other highlights and projects. One is a network of trails linking more than 300 acres around the conservancy with historic properties that

surround it. Those trails will be open to the public.

On April 5, the conservancy will plant its 25,000^th tree in five years, but plans to double that by the conservancy’s 50^th anniversary in 2017.

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Conservancy practices what it preaches

Local News

Planting-057 — Conservancy practices what it preaches

There are some changes going on at the Brandywine Conservancy campus in Chadds Ford. The grounds are being tended to in a manner more in line with the conservancy’s mission.

About 30 volunteers and employees spent several hours planting native grasses and shrubs by the Environment Management Center that, according to Mark Gormel, will result in less stormwater runoff into the Brandywine Creek, improve water quality and increase habitat for the insects that birds eat.

Gormel is the horticultural coordinator for the conservancy.

“The goal is to put more native plants on the campus because native plants are the plants our wildlife have coevolved with. They’re adapted to using them. They rely on them,” Gormel said while coordinating the plantings on July 23.

Areas that have been turf grass, the grass that needs to be mowed, will become “native plant communities,” he said.

The change will make for an area that will be ecologically more productive because the plants are deep-rooted, he said.

“There will be better water infiltration into the soil, so we’re going to slow down or really reduce the storm runoff that comes from this part of the campus,” Gormel said.

As the plants mature and reach full size, they will use more water, thereby reducing the runoff even more. He added that they could start seeing results before the end of the summer.

The plants will also supply habitat for moth and butterfly species as well as the insects.

“Once you get that kind of activity on the plants, then you get a food chain staring to happen where the insects feed the birdlife in the area,” he said. “A lot of people don’t know that about 95 or 99 percent of our common, every day birds rely on insects to feed their young.”

Conservancy Executive Director Virginia Logan said the project has been in development for about a year. It first came up in a series of pizza lunches Logan had with the staff in various departments at the conservancy, from land planners to security personnel.

The project is part of an idea to explore art as part of the environment.

“We do well in excellence as a land trust and as an art museum,” Logan said. “This is our connective theme.”

Those lunches led to three goals that have become part of the conservancy’s strategic plan. The goals include developing the campus around the Brandywine River Museum more fully as “a living tribute to what we do,’ she said. The new plantings are part of that goal.

Other goals include broadening the perspective by establishing a trail network from the main campus to the N.C. Wyeth and Andrew Wyeth studios to the Kuerner Farm.

“The trail network will help to not only connect people with nature, but to also offer programming,” Logan said.

That programming would include bringing in interpretive land art and also installing signs with QR codes that would link to information regarding what the conservancy is doing, and also link information telling what significance that particular area might have to a piece of artwork in the museum.

The third goal is to use the museum to help better explain the entire mission.

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