It is named after William Maxwell "Max" Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, who funded the building of the gallery and assembled the original collection.

Former director Terry Graff stated that this "expansion and revitalization" aimed to make the gallery "an important destination for national and international contemporary art".

[2] In 1954 Lord Beaverbrook made an offer to Hugh John Flemming, the Premier of New Brunswick, to build and stock an art gallery in Fredericton.

[4]: 71  The Province accepted the proposal, and provided him with a site directly across from the New Brunswick Legislative Building on the southern bank of the Saint John River.

[4]: 193 On 20 May 2015, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery unveiled plans for a large expansion project following a 6-year $25 million fundraising campaign.

[6] The expansion includes a substantial increase to gallery space, an artist-in-residence studio, a learning theatre, a café, and an outdoor sculpture courtyard.

On September 16, 2016, the Gallery unveiled the installation of a newly acquired work by Sorel Etrog titled King and Queen.

Turner, John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds, Edwin Henry Landseer and other 18th- and 19th-century British artists.

Beaverbrook had also acquired works by contemporary artists with whom he was personally acquainted, including Augustus John, William Orpen, and Graham Sutherland.

[14][15] In recent years, the Gallery has been expanding its collection to include a wider selection of modern and contemporary Canadian and International art.

In 2015 and 2016 the Gallery acquired more than 2000 additional works of art for its permanent collection, representing an outpouring of generosity from donors nationwide.

Notable Canadian artists that have been added to the collection include IAIN BAXTER&, Oscar Cahén, Jacques Hurtubise, and Denis Juneau.

Internationally, the Gallery has acquired works by many modern and contemporary artists including Barbara Astman, Hans Hofmann, Edward Kienholz, Dennis Oppenheim, Jean-Paul Riopelle.

In 2002 the Foundation hired Sotheby's to obtain a current valuation of the insured works, which the Gallery's director had valued at $7.6 million in Canadian funds in 2000.

In 2003 the Foundation, which was headed by Lord Beaverbrook's grandson Maxwell Aitken, proposed to take back and sell the two most valuable paintings, The Fountain of Indolence and Hotel Bedroom.

[20] They maintained the original 85/48 split of the disputed art works and said that they had also agreed on the allocation of legal costs; in a 2013 Afterword to his book on the dispute, New Brunswick author Jacques Poitras reported on speculation that the agreement would see the Foundation avoid paying the Gallery's costs, and that in exchange the Gallery would get a share of the proceeds when the Foundation sold the 48 works that were to be returned to it.

After Lord Beaverbrook's death in 1964, his widow denied that the paintings belonged to the Gallery and proposed to withdraw them from the collection.