The Pacific Street location has eight galleries and houses the administrative and curatorial offices, and the Buck Education Center consisting of classrooms, a library and the Youth Gallery.

La Mirada was expanded with modern galleries and is used to present traveling exhibitions from other institutions, highlights of the museum's permanent collection that include masters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and significant emerging artists of today such as Ingrid Calame.

In addition to the museum's exhibitions, it presents educational programs that reach thousands of area youth annually, docent programs, classes, lectures and workshops, curatorial tours and public events such as a free Community Day organized for families.

Highlights of the museum's collection include works by Armin Hansen, William Ritschel, Joan Miró, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, as well as that of world-renowned photographers Edward Weston and Ansel Adams.

Notable artists, represented in the museum, who worked in California in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Photographers represented in the permanent collection: Contemporary art holdings: Asian art collection including textiles, woodblock prints, jade and lacquer objects, and ceramics from Japan, China and Korea.