Lowe Art Museum

This guide to the Lowe Art Museum turns on a decision made by an elderly, unmarried retail tycoon: which overlooked American city would receive a genuine slice of the Italian Renaissance. Samuel Kress built one of the country's great five-and-dime empires across twenty-nine states, then spent his fortune quietly assembling Italian Renaissance paintings and sculpture that could rival any national collection. In his final years he began giving it all away, town by town, to the smaller places his stores had once made rich.