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Virginia Logan at the conservancy’s Chadds Ford showpiece, the Brandywine Museum of Art. Photo by Jim Graham. All other photos courtesy of Brandywine Conservancy.
In a region rife with environmental challenges, Virginia Logan guides the Brandywine Conservancy with a steady hand.
In 1967, to stave off the threat of industrial development, a small group headed by George A. “Frolic” Weymouth purchased a property along Brandywine Creek in Chadds Ford. Two years later, they established easements to protect over five miles of land bordering the creek, restoring the old Hoffman’s Mill and opening what’s now the Brandywine Museum of Art on the bank near Route 1.
Today, almost 60 years later, the Brandywine Conservancy is at the forefront of land preservation efforts in Pennsylvania and Delaware, much of it within the Brandywine watershed. It holds more than 510 conservation easements, permanently protecting more than 70,200 acres. That’s the equivalent of about 110 square miles of mostly rural property. The conservancy is also in charge of the Laurels, Birmingham Hill and Waterloo Mills preserves, as well as the Penguin Court Preserve and Thomas Road Farm in Westmoreland County near Pittsburgh.
Brandywine Conservancy’s Penguin Court.
Many of these accomplishments have taken place on the watch of Virginia Logan, who was hired in January 2012 as executive director and CEO of the Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art after James H. Duff retired from the position. “I got to work with Frolic for four and a half years before he died,” says Logan, who’d previously worked in executive positions with Sunoco, the Philadelphia Boys Choir & Chorale and the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. “Frolic and I not only worked together on specific projects, but we also talked about things that were important to him. I always admired the way he inspired others to come together for a shared good.”
Relaxed and friendly but also very much in charge, Logan is conversing in her office, a small office building across the driveway from the museum. Her organization now has 149 full- and part-time staff members—some employed by the conservancy, some with the museum, and the rest in finance, development, marketing and other shared services. According to its most recent annual report, the conservancy has almost $200 million in assets. “Our endowment is about 40% of our income, earnings are about 27% and the rest is contributions made in various forms throughout the year,” notes Logan. “We also have amazing volunteers—more than 700 of them. We try to pair them with where they fit. Some work as gardeners around the grounds, some work with the seed collecting…lots of different things. The museum docents go through a rigorous training curriculum.”
Waterloo Mills
That symbiosis was shaken in September 2021, when Hurricane Ida turned Brandywine Creek into a raging river. The museum grounds had been flooded before, but not like this. Ida’s waters poured into its lowest level, with its lecture space, offices, classrooms and mechanical and electrical systems. The museum was forced to close for three months.
“The flood did extreme damage to the building, and the experts told us we’d need to shut down for a year and a half,” says Cuyler Walker, the conservancy and museum board chair. “Ginny was having none of it. The flood was in September, and we were partially opened by late November, our busiest season.”
Restoration work is still underway and should be completed by the end of this year. “We’ve hardened the museum building with submarine-grade material and tie-down girders so water can’t get underneath and lift the building,” says Logan. “When we were flooded during Ida, I was overwhelmed by the level of community support. Neighbors—some of whom were affected themselves by the flood—came out voluntarily in those first days to work with us on the cleanup. Once our own recovery plan was in place, we asked what we could do to give back.”
The answer: the Brandywine Flood Study. Launched in August 2023, two years after Ida, the initiative aims to identify options for reducing flood impacts, to improve public safety and lessen property damage. Led by the conservancy, with primary funding from Chester County and the Delaware County Council, the study is supported by the University of Delaware Water Resources Center, Stroud Water Research Center, West Chester University and others. “Virginia is both a collaborative and a delegative leader,” says Gerald “Jerry” Kauffman, director of the Water Resources Center. “Right after Ida, she addressed the need for the flooding study right away, and now we’re beginning to see the fruits of that leadership.”
Results from the study are expected later this year. “We’ll probably find some things bigger than we can undertake,” Logan admits. “But there will be smaller steps to make things better—although we know there’s unlikely to be a silver bullet to fix everything. But if we hadn’t done work upstream with easements and preserves, it would’ve been worse.”
Laurels Preserve
Ginny Logan grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts. “There were endless acres of woods when I was young,” she recalls. “But by the time I went away to college, they’d built out every square mile. Things were all wedged together.”
That early experience with unchecked development left an impression. As an English major at Lafayette College, she followed with interest an early-’80s protest movement that opposed the pumping of water from the Delaware River. They were successful in stalling the project, but not stopping it.
After receiving her law degree from Villanova University, Logan worked for Sunoco for 25 years, overseeing its commercial law practice at one point. Today, she lives with her husband on the Main Line and has two grown children, both marketing professionals living in New England. Apparently, they take after their mom. “Ginny has extraordinary strength in community relations—something that was at a nadir when she came on board,” says conservancy board member Scott Richard. “She quickly turned that around, which has proven critical in getting farmers to put their lands into easement and rally growth in new museum members.”
One of Logan’s pet projects has nothing to do with the Brandywine Valley. Named for the 10 birds once ensconced there, Penguin Court and Thomas Road Farm were part of a western Pennsylvania estate owned by Pittsburgh’s Mellon banking family. The property boasts 1,089 acres of forests, meadows and open space, along with a spring-fed reservoir and pond, a 7,000-square-foot conservatory, and a 3,700 square-foot greenhouse.
Longtime conservancy trustee Richard Mellon Scaife left the estate to the organization upon his death in 2014, along with about half of his art collection. “It wasn’t that we had to make a decision to leave this area,” says Logan. “The organization never had any geographic limitations.”
Finally, Logan contends that having a major art museum and land conservation organization under the same roof isn’t as odd as it might seem. After all, the museum’s original patron, Andrew Wyeth, was a passionate naturalist. “Our staffs work together on many projects,” Logan says. “There’s a natural relationship between art and nature.”
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