Behind the Kress Collection: European Art of the 1500s–1700s

Take a deep dive into Renaissance and Baroque artworks on view and learn the story behind how they came into the museum’s collection.

A large part of the High’s European Art collection was donated in the 1950s by businessman and philanthropist Samuel H. Kress, who deeply believed in art as a force for good and worked to make it accessible to everyone. The first part of this multiweek class will explore the history of the Kress Collection. We’ll learn the story of how Kress grew his five-and-ten-cent stores and then amassed a collection of three thousand works of Renaissance and Baroque art, which he then gave to museums across the United States for the enjoyment of their patrons. The second half of the class will provide the historical context of the artworks themselves, including Giovanni Bellini’s Madonna and Child and Tommaso del Mazza’s Madonna and Child with Six Saints.

Through a combination of lectures, in-gallery discussions, and supplemental readings, class participants can expect to both learn how one art patron made a difference in so many museum collections across the United States and gain a new understanding of Renaissance and Baroque art.

This class will meet on Thursdays, October 31, November 7, 14, and 21. On the first day of class, please present your QR code ticket to a Guest Relations team member at the Admissions and Information desk. Then, please proceed to the Lecture Room where this class is taking place. The Lecture Room is on the Lower Level of the Stent Family Wing in the Greene Family Education Center

Julia Forbes is the High’s Associate Director of Institutional Research. Prior to this, she served for over eighteen years as the High’s Shannon Landing Amos Head of Museum Interpretation. She has more than thirty years of experience writing and teaching art history and has held education positions at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington National Cathedral, the Walters Art Museum, and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. She is coauthor of the book Family Spaces in Art Museums: Creating Curiosity, Wonder, and Play (2022), and she holds degrees in art history and cultural anthropology from the University of California at Santa Barbara and a master’s from George Washington University in art history and museum training.