In 1953, the college established the Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery in order to exhibit works from that collection.

In 1990, the art museum was incorporated as an independent institution from the university, and moved into the T. C. Douglas Building at the southwestern edge of Wascana Centre.

The MacKenzie Art Gallery's permanent collection has over 5,000 works spanning over 5,000 years of Canadian history.

[6] The donation was endowed to the South Saskatchewan Community Foundation, which helps to manage and disperse the funds on the museum's behalf.

[7] In 2019, a sculpture holding a bowl of rice, thought to represent Vishnu, was identified by Winnipeg-based artist Divya Mehra was potentially stolen from an active temple in 1913.

Siddhartha Shah of the Peabody Essex Museum later confirmed her findings, and that the sculpture actually depicted Annapurna.

[10] The renovations to the building was conducted in order meet environmental sensitivity needs for the exhibition of certain artworks.

[4] The museum's mandate includes providing the public with an encyclopedic range of different forms of culture and visual arts.

The donors, Thomas Druyan and Alice Ladner, further announced that their remaining collection, as well as any works acquired by them since their donation, would be gifted to the museum upon their deaths.

The sculpture garden includes the Bronze Mother and Child II statute by Jacques Lipchitz.

[13] The museum intended for the commissioned work to reflect on the country's national commemoration, efforts on reconciliation, and intercultural relations.