[2] The society's founders include Sir Basil Goulding, who served as the first chair, Cecil King, Gordon Lambert, Michael Scott and others.
[3] During the 1960s and early 1970s it supported the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, which received around forty works of art, including works by Gerard Dillon, Gerda Frömel, James Scanlon, William Scott and Camille Souter.
2 for Miró, a stained glass donated by the society, "one of the delights" of the Hugh Lane collection.
[3][5] IMMA states that the collection documents "almost all the major developments in Irish art over the past 50 years" and notes "The keen eye which its members brought to their choice of works is clearly evident in the number of artists, relatively unknown at the time of purchase, who have since gone on to become leading figures in the Irish, and indeed international, visual art arenas.
"[3] In a review of the exhibition, art critic Brian Fallon called the society's collecting "astute" and stated that the exhibition was "a highly representative selection of Irish art over nearly half a century.