The museum displays an important collection of European paintings and is largely open to design, including a gallery dedicated to Jean Prouvé or the Daum factory.

The pavilion that houses the museum since 1936 belongs to the ensemble designed by the architect Emmanuel Héré in the mid-eighteenth century for the former King of Poland and Duke of Lorraine and Bar, Stanislas.

In 1936, the pavilion was modernized and extended by architects Jacques and Michel André, laureate of the architectural competition launched by the municipality for the museum, 5 years earlier.

The garden facade is an important part of the architects' project and will be taken up again in 2019 for the poster of the exhibition organized on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the second renovation of the establishment.

In February 1999, after spectacular extension work (including a major archaeological excavation), a new contemporary wing designed by Laurent Beaudouin's agency was inaugurated.

In 2000, Felice Varini made inside the museum Ellipse orange évidée par sept disques, an anamorphosis visible from several floors.

Some of the painters whose work is featured in the collections are Perugino, Tintoretto, Jan Brueghel the Younger, Caravaggio, Georges de La Tour, Charles Le Brun, Ribera, Rubens, Claude Gellée (known as Le Lorrain and Claude), Luca Giordano, François Boucher, Eugène Delacroix, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Paul Signac, Modigliani, Picasso, Raoul Dufy, Constance Mayer... 15th-18th century art 19th-20th century art Media related to Paintings in the musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy at Wikimedia Commons