"[2] In 1927, American philanthropist and scholar Archer M. Huntington donated approximately 4,300 acres of land in Galveston County to the University of Texas at Austin for the use and benefit of a museum.

In 1994, Mari Yoriko Sabusawa gave $5 million for the construction of a new museum complex which would unite the University's various art collection in a single place.

[15] In January 2015, Ellsworth Kelly gifted to the Blanton Museum the design concept for a 2,715 square foot stone building with stained glass windows that he subsequently named Austin.

Many came from the Castle Ashby Collection formed by the Spencer Compton, 2nd Marquess of Northampton, who funded numerous excavations at Vulci, an Etruscan town north of Rome, during the 1820s.

[28] Donated to the Blanton Museum of Art at its opening, the Battle Collection of Plaster Casts[7] are on display adjacent to the Julia Matthews Wilkinson Center for Prints and Drawings.

[30] The collection of European paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts before 1900 includes the Suida-Manning Collection of over 650 with works by artists from the 15th through 18th centuries including Parmigianino, Paolo Veronese, Tiepolo, Guercino, Rubens, Claude Vignon, Claude Lorrain, and Simon Vouet,[31] as well as lesser-known but historically significant painters such as Daniele Crespi and Luca Cambiaso.

[35] The museum's collection includes 20th-century artists such as Thomas Hart Benton, Alice Neel, Brice Marden, Hans Hofmann, Philip Guston, Helen Frankenthaler, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichenstein, and Joan Mitchell.

[35] The Blanton's collection of contemporary art includes works by El Anatsui, Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler, Natalie Frank, Nina Katchadourian, Byron Kim, Yayoi Kusama, Glenn Ligon, Donald Moffett, Susan Philipsz, and Tavares Strachan.

In 2009, Stacked Waters, an installation by artist Teresita Fernández commissioned by Jeanne and Michael Klein, debuted in the Rapoport Atrium of the Blanton Museum.

[6] The Latin American collection expanded significantly in the 1970s and 1980s with gifts from collector Barbara Duncan of 277 works of art, including 58 paintings and 112 drawings.

The founding curator of the department was Mari Carmen Ramírez who acquired one of the signature works in the Latin American collection, Cildo Meireles' Missão/Missões: How to Build Cathedrals (1987).

The 114-object collection includes paintings, sculptures, and drawings by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, Tarsila do Amaral, Rufino Tamayo, Joaquín Torres García, Wifredo Lam, Herman Braun-Vega, Armando Reveron, Jesus Rafael Soto, and Lygia Clark, among others.

[42] Also representing European art from this period is the Leo Steinberg Collection of almost 3,500 prints, including early impressions by Hendrick Goltzius, Claude Lorrain, and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione.

Julia and Stephen Wilkinson and their Still Water Foundation gave over 1030 prints, primarily wood engravings from the first half of the 20th century tied to the tradition of social realism.

The collection includes works by Oscar E. Berninghaus, Albert Bierstadt, Solon H. Borglum, Dean Cornwell, Maynard Dixon, Henry Farny, Thomas Hill, Ransome Gillett Holdridge, Peter Hurd, Frank Tenney Johnson, Tom Lea, William Robinson Leigh, Alfred Jacob Miller, and Thomas Moran.