Beginning in 1799, while engaged in collecting works of art of the Isère Region, Jay requested a public subscription to purchase paintings and drawings.

Housed in four halls of the first floor of the former bishopric from its opening on 31 December 1800, the museum had 298 works of art including 177 paintings, 80 drawings or engravings and 45 sculptures placed in the garden.

In 1815, despite a partial dispersion of works as a result of the Restoration, (57 paintings were returned to their owners, 11 disappeared and an unknown number were deposited in the churches) the collection continued to increase.

From 1895 until his accidental death on 15 July 1910, he bought for the museum 50 paintings, 13 drawings, 16 sculptures, 13 pieces of archeology and hundreds of objects from the Far East.

The following year, the new mayor of Grenoble Alain Carignon, and the Minister of Culture Jack Lang, agreed on the idea and on the site of the new building, on a parking lot near the centre of town.

To complete the Museum there is a sculpture garden in the Albert Michallon park, a wooded area of 16,000 m2 surrounding the old city wall from the late 19th century.

In 1591, the future Duke of Lesdiguieres, who came to take possession of the city during the religious wars, built a new fortified wall, turning the place into a small fortress called Arsenal to protect himself from any rebellion of the inhabitants.

Finally to the east, access to a football stadium must to be retained during the development of the structure for an area with high urban population density.

The end of the aisle has been left empty of any work, in an arc, this huge area is dedicated to the 20th century, and also gives access to the Tower of the Island.

A few metres from the building, the museum features via a skywalk of glass and steel, the Tower of the Island, transforming it into a place of exhibition graphics.

Then during the 20th century, there were Xavier Borgey and in particular Pierre André Farcy, called Andry-Farcy, curator from 1919 to 1949, who decisively guided the museum in favour of the collection of modern art.

His successors were Jean Leymarie, Gabrielle Kueny, Maurice Besset, Marie-Claude Beaud, Pierre Gaudibert, Hélène Vincent (Temporary for 2 years), Serge Lemoine, and, since 2002, Guy Tosatto.

From the 18th century, there are ancient Egyptian pieces from excavations run by the antiques office of the municipal library of Grenoble, of which Jean-François Champollion was the assistant librarian.

In April 2010, the "prophétesse d'Antinoé", a 6th-century mummy discovered in 1907, in a Coptic necropolis at Antinoöpolis in Middle Egypt, was returned to the Museum of Grenoble, after more than fifty years of absence.

The collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities is regarded as the fifth largest in France, after that of the Louvre, the Museum of Archeology Mediterranean in Marseille, Lyon, and Dijon.

Works of Pérugin (2 paintings), Fra Bartolomeo (attributed to), Giorgio Vasari, Adrien Ysenbrandt, and Georg Pencz can also be found in this section.

Other paintings are notably by: Nicolas de Largilliere, Hyacinthe Rigaud, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Joseph-Marie Vien, Sebastiano Ricci, Giovanni Paolo Pannini, and Thomas Gainsborough.

The founder of this school, Jean Achard created the first majestic landscapes that excited the painters that followed: Laurent Guétal, Charles Bertier, Ernest Hebert, the Abbe Cales.

All the trends and movements of the painter are present, such as Fauvism with the paintings of Henri Matisse (8 paintings), André Derain, Albert Marquet, Raoul Dufy, Maurice de Vlaminck, Emile Othon Friesz (6 pictures), Jean Puy, Charles Camoin (Nude with purple shirt, acquired in 2012), and Kees van Dongen.

Four paintings illustrate the different artistic periods of Pablo Picasso while there are also works of painters such as Pierre Bonnard, Jacques Villon, Natalia Goncharova, Paul Signac, Henri-Edmond Cross (5 paintings), Claude Monet, Georges Rouault, Robert Delaunay, Kurt Schwitters, George Grosz, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, František Kupka, Theo van Doesburg, Jean Arp, Nicolas de Staël, Balthus, Bernard Buffet and Hans Hartung.

Matisse donated his Interior of eggplants, Pablo Picasso's Woman reading in 1921 Claude Monet's Corner of the pond at Giverny in 1923.

Great names of surrealism are also present such as Giorgio de Chirico, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Max Ernst, André Masson, Francis Picabia, and Yves Tanguy.

Sculptures are also present in some rooms with works of Auguste Rodin, Georges Rouault(female nude, c.1909), Henri Laurens, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Jacques Lipchitz, Julio Gonzalez, Ossip Zadkine, Max Ernst (A lost Chinaman), Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Calder, and even Henri Matisse, again thanks to the Agutte-Sembat legacy.

The Museum of Grenoble is also a reference for contemporary art, its collection is one of the oldest in France, including works by Pierre Soulages, Christian Boltanski (Monument), Christo, Tàpies, Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, Robert Ryman, Jean Dubuffet, Jean Peyrissac, Annette Messager and Rebecca Horn.

Acquired for an amount of 750,000 euros thanks to the patrons club of the museum, "Glass" will be presented for three years for two-month periods starting from 19 December 2012.

Most often displayed in the Tower if the Island, arranged into an exhibition of graphic arts, the old collection consists of 5,500 drawings[21] mainly from donations and bequests of Léonce Mesnard in the 19th century.

The 19th century is characterized by an important series by artists such as: Eugène Delacroix, Paul Gauguin, Fantin-Latour, and Jongkind[23] with watercolors by Dauphiné.

Other than Matisse (with 28 works in all) the collection includes drawings by: Jean Arp, Antonin Artaud, Pierre Bonnard, Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, André Derain (Portrait of Francis Carco), Raoul Dufy (68 works), Max Ernst, Leonard Foujita, Julio Gonzalez, Juan Gris, František Kupka, Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger, Alberto Magnelli, Albert Marquet, André Masson, Joan Miró, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso (Glass, glued paper from 1914 acquired in 2012), Kurt Schwitters, Paul Signac, Cy Twombly, Suzanne Valadon, Maurice de Vlaminck, Édouard Vuillard, and Ossip Zadkine.

Going to the park through the front of the museum, partly framed by the walls built at the end of the 16th century by the Duke of Lesdiguieres, two works in metal and a bronze statue placed on the Esplanade François Mitterrand can be seen.

In addition to space devoted to the presentation of permanent collections, some halls with an area of 1,000 square metres are reserved for temporary exhibitions.