Turner-Wohlsen JV awarded $100 million Brandywine Museum expansion in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania

A Turner-Wohlsen joint venture has been selected to deliver a $100 million expansion of the Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, according to an 18 August 2026 release from New York City-based Turner Construction.^[1] The award is the latest institutional commission for the two firms, which previously teamed on a $6 billion CoreWeave data center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

What the project covers

The centrepiece is a new 40,000-square-foot museum building designed by Kengo Kuma & Associates - the architect's first museum building in the United States - in partnership with Boston-based Schwartz/Silver Architects.^[1] The scope also includes:

• Renovation of the historic Mill building, a mid-19th-century grist mill on the banks of the Brandywine Creek
• Flood-hardening upgrades to the Mill, which suffered more than $10 million in damage during Hurricane Ida in 2021
• Transformation of the surrounding land into a 325-acre public preserve and garden, with ten miles of trails connecting both museum buildings
• Interpretive installations along the trails linking the campus to the historic homes and studios of N.C. Wyeth and Andrew Wyeth

Landscape design is led by Field Operations, the New York firm behind the High Line.

Gallery capacity and programme

The new building will deliver 14,000 square feet of gallery space, increasing the museum's total exhibition capacity across both buildings by 80% to nearly 20,000 square feet. A 4,000-square-foot upper-level gallery will be dedicated to landscape paintings - a collecting strength the museum has not previously been able to display in depth - alongside a 4,000-square-foot special-exhibitions hall and a 1,000-square-foot Andrew Wyeth gallery. A lower-level gallery is designed to make the Brandywine the primary destination for Wyeth family works, spanning 130 years of the dynasty's output.

Contractor background and funding

Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based Wohlsen Construction has a prior relationship with the museum, having carried out flood-hardening and restoration work on the Mill building after Hurricane Ida.^[1] Wohlsen has operated in the region for more than 40 years and is an ENR Top 400 builder with offices across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Turner's Philadelphia office leads the JV on the owner's side.

On the funding side, the Brandywine Conservancy reported in May 2026 that nearly 50% of the estimated $100 million project cost had already been raised from donors. No public financing has been disclosed.

Schedule

Construction is scheduled to begin in early 2027, with the completed campus expected to open to the public in late 2029. The project will be built on a 15-acre site, with the new building positioned on higher ground than the existing Mill - a deliberate response to the flood risk that derailed an earlier, smaller expansion plan.

The fundraising pace and the donor-funded structure will be the key variables to watch before groundbreaking. If the campaign closes the remaining 50% of the budget on schedule, the JV should be on site by the first quarter of 2027; any shortfall would push that date and compress the two-and-a-half-year build window the team has pencilled in for a late-2029 opening.