The French Collection includes works by painters such as Jacques-Louis David, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Degas and Cézanne, as well as those by Post-impressionists such as van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Bonnard.

In 1885 his 'house museum' had grown to a total of 19 galleries, the first 14 of which had been designed by Vilhelm Dahlerup while Hack Kampmann had built the last four as well as conducted a redesign of the winter garden.

On 8 March 1888 Carl Jacobsen donated his collection to the Danish State and the City of Copenhagen on condition that they provided a suitable building for its exhibition.

Copenhagen's old fortifications had recently been abandoned and a site was chosen on a ravelin outside Holcks Bastion in the city's Western Rampart, just south of the Tivoli Gardens which had been founded in 1843.

The Kampmann Wing is a more simple, neo-classical building, built as a series of galleries around a central auditorium used for lectures, small concerts, symposiums and poetry readings.

The two wings are connected by the Winter Garden with mosaic floors, tall palms, a fountain and topped by a dome made in copper and wrought iron.

[9] The Egyptian Collection comprises more than 1,900 pieces, dating from 3000 BCE to the 1st century CE and representing both Ancient Egypt, the Middle Kingdom and the Roman Period.

Many of the objects in the collection were augmented when the Ny Carlsberg Foundation sponsored excavations in Egypt in the beginning of the 20th century led by the English Egyptologist W. M. F. Petrie .

The Near Eastern Collection spans a period of 7150 years, the oldest artifact being from 6500 BCE and the youngest being from 650 CE, featuring such cultures as the Levant, Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Persia.

Represented sculptors include Neoclassicists such as Canova, Sergel, Carstens, Flaxman, Rauch and Baily, as well as Modernists like Meunier, Klinger, Picasso and Giacometti.

The museum is used as a location in the films Stjerneskud (1947), Fodboldpræsten (1951), Dorte (1951), Mød mig på Cassiopeia (1951), Bruden fra Dragstrup (1955) and Den kære familie (1962).

[18] The building was the inspiration for the set design of the Valkyries' Rock in Kasper Holten's 2006 production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Copenhagen Opera House.