The museum is part of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura and provides exhibitions of national and international contemporary artists.

The museum also hosts a permanent collection of art from Remedios Varo, Gelsen Gas, Frida Kahlo, Olga Costa, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Leonora Carrington, Rufino Tamayo, Juan Soriano, and Vicente Rojo Almazán.

The museum building was based on the design of the architects Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and Carlos A. Cazares Salcido (Professor at the University of Sonora), in collaboration with Rafael Mijares Alcérreca.

Within its permanent exhibition are works of several great Mexican masters of the period, such as: Frida Kahlo, Julio Castellanos, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Emir Jair, Roberto Montenegro, José Clemente Orozco, Louis Henri Jean Charlot, Juan Soriano, Juan O'Gorman, Diego Rivera, Jesús Guerrero Galván, María Izquierdo, Rufino Tamayo, Raúl Anguiano, Federico Cantú, Carlos Orozco Romero, Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, Ricardo Martínez de Hoyos, Jorge González Camarena, Guillermo Meza, Francisco Corzas, Leonora Carrington, Alfredo Zalce, Remedios Varo, Agustín Lazo, Ángel Zárraga, Gerardo Murillo, José Chávez Morado, Mathías Goeritz, Gunther Gerzso, Manuel Felguérez, Abraham Ángel, Pedro Coronel, Luis López Loza, Francisco Toledo, Francisco Zúñiga, Pedro Friedeberg, Luis Ortiz Monasterio, Feliciano Béjar, Rosa Castillo y Mardonio Magaña.

The museum has four rooms that are named after different personalities of the Mexican cultural environment of the twentieth century: Xavier Villaurrutia, Carlos Pellicer, Antonieta Rivas Mercado, and José Juan Tablada.