The museum was created to house and display the growing collection of artifacts gathered from field schools of archaeological research associated with the UNM Anthropology Department, the School of American Research, and the Museum of New Mexico.

In 1972 a major construction project expanded museum facilities, which was funded by the philanthropists Dorothy and Gilbert Maxwell.

The People of the Southwest permanent exhibit depicts eleven thousand years of the cultural heritage of the American Southwest and features artifacts from Mimbres, Ancestral Puebloan, and Puebloan cultures, as well as displays on UNM field work in New Mexico, which includes a reconstruction of an excavation at Chaco Canyon.

The museum's North Gallery, Bawden Gallery (named after Garth Bawden, museum director 1985-2005), and the Ortiz Center Gathering Space (named for the late Alfonso Ortiz, a noted UNM anthropology professor) host changing exhibits featuring artifacts from the extensive museum collection as well as traveling exhibits.

[1] The totem pole was restored and is now housed in the lobby of the Anthropology Department's Hibben Center building next to the museum.