This exceptional generosity continued a pattern long established by Samuel Kress, who during the 1930's invented the traveling art exhibition by circulating a selection of 50 Italian pictures from his collection to 24 American cities. He also donated a total of 86 paintings to 39 museums, schools and churches across the country. Enlarging upon this example, the Foundation in the 1950s developed an unprecedented program that offered municipal museums the opportunity to select a core collection of Old Master paintings and other European works of art. Eighteen museums - in Allentown, Atlanta, Birmingham, Columbia (South Carolina), Coral Gables, Denver, El Paso, Honolulu, Houston, Kansas City, Memphis, New Orleans, Portland (Oregon), Raleigh, San Francisco, Seattle, Tucson, and Tulsa - were identified as Kress Regional Galleries and received a total of 631 Old Master paintings, 39 sculptures, and 34 pieces of antique furniture. For most of these communities, the Kress pictures were the first important European paintings in their permanent collections.

Another related program established Kress Study Collections of paintings, sculpture, and rare books at institutions of higher learning. Beneficiaries included 14 universities (Arizona, Bucknell, Chicago, Georgia, Harvard, Howard, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Notre Dame, UCLA, Vanderbilt, Wisconsin) and nine colleges (Amherst, Arizona State, Berea, Bowdoin, Oberlin, Pomona, Trinity, Vassar, Williams), as well as several local museums. Generations of students have since enjoyed access to original works of European art.

Remarkably, the creation, conservation (a facility was constructed for this purpose), and distribution of the Kress Collection was accomplished in just over thirty years. An international team of scholars researched and wrote a nine-volume catalogue that was completed in 1976.

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