It is free of charge to visitors and offers a wide selection of events related to exhibition, community, and university topics.

[5] Ackland, who had turned down the chance to attend Harvard College due to family pressure to stay near home, always regretted the decision.

[4] But the Ackland trustees had decided that UNC-Chapel Hill should receive the donation, based on both the financial condition of the university and its proximity to Duke.

[8] Artists in the collection include Eugène Delacroix, Albrecht Dürer, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Käthe Kollwitz, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, and Max Weber.

In 2024 the museum restituted the painting L'atelier du Maître / The Master's workshop to the heirs of Armand Dorville, a French Jewish art collector whose family was murdered in the Holocaust.