It was founded in 1883 on the initiative of the then minister Guido Baccelli and is dedicated to modern and contemporary art.

The present building, at 113 Via delle Belle Arti (near the Villa Giulia), was designed by Cesare Bazzani and was built between 1911 and 1915.

[4] The museum displays about 1100 paintings and sculptures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, of which it has the largest collection in Italy.

Among the Italian artists represented are Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Alberto Burri, Antonio Canova, Giorgio de Chirico, Lucio Fontana, Amedeo Modigliani, Giacomo Manzù, Vittorio Matteo Corcos,[5] and Giorgio Morandi.

[6]: 169 The museum also holds some works by foreign artists, among them Braque, Calder, Cézanne, Degas, Duchamp, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Monet, Jackson Pollock, Rodin, and Van Gogh.