It is managed by the Moreira Salles family and is exclusively dedicated to the promotion, collection development, and implementation of cultural programs in the fields of photography, literature, iconography, visual arts, music, and cinema.

[7] The city of Poços de Caldas in Minas Gerais became home to IMS's first cultural center in 1992, a decision made by diplomat Walter Moreira Salles as a tribute to the region where his family settled in 1918.

Spanning nine floors, the building includes three exhibition halls, a 150-seat cinetheater, a study space, three classrooms for lectures and courses, a café, and a restaurant led by Rodrigo Oliveira.

[11] IMS has a prominent role in the field of photography, focusing on the formation of collections and the preservation of rare sets that address topics related to the Brazil's memory, history, communications, and visual arts.

[12] Currently, the collection comprises around 2 million images[13] by photographers such as Augusto Malta, Alberto Henschel, Albert Frisch, Alécio de Andrade, Alice Brill, Augusto Stahl, Carlos Moskovics, Chico Albuquerque, Claude Lévi-Strauss, David Drew Zingg, Domingos de Miranda Ribeiro, Dulce Soares, Francisco du Bocage, Georg Leuzinger, Guilherme Gaensly, Guilherme Santos, Hans Gunter Flieg, Haruo Ohara, Henri Ballot, Hércules Florence, Hildegard Rosenthal, Horacio Coppola, José Medeiros, Juca Martins, Lily Sverner, Luciano Carneiro, Madalena Schwartz, Marc Ferrez, Marcel Gautherot, Martín Chambi, Maureen Bisilliat, Militão Augusto de Azevedo, Otto Stupakoff, Peter Scheier, Revert Henrique Klumb, Rossini Perez, Stefania Bril, Thomaz Farkas, and Vincenzo Pastore.