[3] It deals with the immigration and settlement history of South Australia, and maintains both a permanent and a rotating collection of works.

[4] The museum aims to promote cultural diversity and multiculturalism, which they define as including aspects of ethnicity, class, gender, age and region.

[5] The site is located on Kintore Avenue between the State Library of South Australia, the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide, in a complex of early colonial bluestone buildings set around a courtyard, including the city's former destitute asylum (from 1850 to 1918).

Before this, the site was the location of the "Native School", which aimed to educate aboriginal children.

[7] A memorial wall at the museum reflects an acknowledgement of the various communities who have sought refuge in Australia, while Settlement Square portrays the arrival of many families and individual settlers and a Reconciliation Plaque notes that the land on which the museum is built was first occupied by the Kaurna people.