[2] Over the years, Atlanta businessman Michael C. Carlos donated over $20 million to create a permanent home for the museum, which opened in 1985.

In addition to permanent and temporary exhibitions, the museum is a source of educational programming, providing lectures, symposia, workshops, performances, and festivals.

As a result, the museum now owns and exhibits the finest existing portrait of the Roman emperor Tiberius and one of the country's best examples of Hellenistic sculpture, a depiction of Terpsichore, the Greek muse of dance.

Through research and collaboration with Emory University medical experts, museum scholars were able to identify the mummy as pharaoh Ramesses I.

[12] David Gill, an archaeologist at the University of Kent stated that the museum had "just turned a blind eye" to issues of provenance in its programme of acquisitions.

[11][12] 34 or more vases, figurines, and other artefacts acquired by the museum in this period were bought from Hecht directly or had previously been handled by him.

[11] The museum also purchased an inscribed funerary stele from Hecht in 2003, which was judged to be a modern forgery by an independent expert.

[11] Between 2002 and 2006, the Carlos acquired 52 or more items linked to Fritz Burki and son, a pair of conservators based in Zurich, who are known to have held illegal antiquities and admitted to acting as a fence for Hecht.

[11] In 2015, the museum's registrar, Todd Lamkin, wrote in an email to a member of the Emory faculty that "We tread a fine line when it comes to discussing provenance.