The façade was based on the mission churches of Acoma, San Felipe, Cochiti, Laguna, Santa Ana and Pecos.

[5] The museum’s art collection includes over 20,000 paintings, photographs, sculptures, prints, drawings and mixed-media works.

Notable artists in the collection include Ansel Adams, Gustave Baumann, Brian O'Connor, Georgia O'Keeffe, Fritz Scholder, T. C. Cannon, Bruce Nauman, Luis Jimenez, Maria Martinez, members of the Ashcan School, Los Cinco Pintores, Transcendental Painting Group, and the Taos Society of Artists.

[7] The auditorium displays several murals depicting St. Francis of Assisi which were originally designed by Donald Beauregard and completed by Carlos Vierra and Kenneth M.

[10][11] The renovation project is an adaptive reuse of the 1936 Charles Ilfeld Warehouse (repurposed and renamed as the State of New Mexico's Joseph F Halpin Records Building).