Qualla: Renaissance Masters in the Desert

Renaissance Masters in the Desert: Introduction

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wmpearl, Public domain. There is something almost impossible about finding a Canaletto in El Paso. The great Venetian master's luminous cityscapes belong in the grand museums of London, Vienna, or New York -- not in a mid-sized Texas border city 250 miles from the nearest major metropolitan area. Yet here, in a sleek building on Arts Festival Plaza, hangs one of the 57 European masterpieces that make the El Paso Museum of Art one of the most surprising cultural institutions in the American Southwest. The collection exists because of Samuel H. Kress, the five-and-dime store magnate who believed that great art should not be hoarded in coastal capitals but shared with communities across the nation.

Image: Wmpearl | Public domain

Renaissance Masters in the Desert: The Kress Legacy

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AndiieVga, CC BY-SA 3.0. Samuel Kress built his fortune on variety stores, but he spent it on Renaissance paintings. Beginning in the 1920s, he assembled one of the largest private collections of European art in American history. Unlike other Gilded Age collectors who concentrated their treasures in sing...

Image: AndiieVga | CC BY-SA 3.0

Renaissance Masters in the Desert: Seven Centuries of Genius

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wotancito, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Kress Collection spans from the 12th to the 18th century, offering a survey of European artistic achievement that few regional museums can match. Italian Renaissance masters dominate: the Crivelli brothers, Giovanni di Paolo, Sano di Pietro. Spanish Baroque painting is repres...

Image: Wotancito | CC BY-SA 4.0

Renaissance Masters in the Desert: Art of the Borderlands

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wotancito, CC BY-SA 4.0. The El Paso Museum of Art has not rested on its Kress inheritance. Over the decades, it has built what may be the finest collection of contemporary Southwestern and Mexican border art in the United States. The roster reads like a who's who of the region's artistic voices: Luis Ji...

Image: Wotancito | CC BY-SA 4.0

Renaissance Masters in the Desert: A New Home

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Astrid Bussink from Queens, New York, USA, CC BY 2.0. The museum outgrew its original quarters and in 1998 moved into a striking new building on Arts Festival Plaza in downtown El Paso. The facility was designed to showcase both the historical collection and rotating exhibitions of contemporary work. Today, the museum draws approxim...

Image: Astrid Bussink from Queens, New York, USA | CC BY 2.0

Renaissance Masters in the Desert: The Only One for 250 Miles

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Susan Barnum, CC BY-SA 4.0. The El Paso Museum of Art holds a distinction that speaks to both its importance and its isolation: it is the only accredited art museum within a 250-mile radius. To the east lies the empty expanse of West Texas; to the north, the mountains of southern New Mexico; to the south an...

Image: Susan Barnum | CC BY-SA 4.0