I began working at the High Museum of Art in 2013 as its second Kress Museum Interpretation Fellow, a position funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. The Kress Foundation’s relationship with the High goes back decades.

Businessman and philanthropist Samuel H. Kress deeply believed in art as a force for good, and he worked to make it accessible to everyone. In 1929, he established the Kress Foundation, which has donated thousands of artworks to American museums and universities. Kress’s gift to the High and its underlying social activism helped shape our museum — and many others across the country — into the valuable community resource it remains today.

In the mid-twentieth century, The Kress Foundation began its Regional Galleries program in order to distribute great works of Italian art to cities that otherwise would not have had access to such important artifacts. It was through this program that the High received, in 1958, twenty-seven Italian paintings and three sculptures.

With a tone of incredulity, the editor of distinguished British art journal The Burlington Magazine wrote of the Kress gift: “We can be sure that these altar-pieces from Italian churches, these allegorical panels from French chateaux, which now stray across the American continent like bewildered refugees, will one day work their way, like every other foreign body in this astonishing country, into the very fabric of American life.”

Read the full article about arts philanthropy by High Museum of Art at Medium.