The American collection features early portraits by John Brewster, Jr., Jacob Eichholtz, Rembrandt Peale, Gilbert Stuart, and Benjamin West; 19th-century landscape paintings by Sanford Robinson Gifford, George Inness, John F. Kensett, and William Trost Richards; Ashcan School works by William Glackens, Robert Henri, Maurice Prendergast, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan; There are Modernist and Postmodernist works by Alexander Calder, Jerome Witkin, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Joseph Stella, Marguerite Zorach, Nathan Oliveira, and Jules Olitski, as well as a major collection of works by Seymour Lipton.

Notable artists include Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, Faith Ringgold, Miriam Schapiro, Emma Amos, Eleanor Antin, Nancy Azara, Betsy Damon, Mary Beth Edelson, Lauren Ewing, Harmony Hammond, Joyce Kozloff, Diane Neumaier, Faith Ringgold, Carolee Schneemann, Joan Semmel, Sylvia Sleigh, Joan Snyder, Nancy Spero, May Stevens, Athena Tacha, June Wayne, and Martha Wilson.

[3] Post-modernist architect Charles Willard Moore greatly expanded the building in 1993, converting the "box" into a 150-seat auditorium, and wrapping eleven new galleries around it.

He created a lively entrance plaza, reminiscent of his Piazza d'Italia (1978) in New Orleans, Louisiana, adding multiple levels and a graduated arcade of brick arches resting on cartoon Tuscan columns.

The free-admission Museum strives to be a welcoming, inclusive, and vibrant forum for authentic arts experiences, cultivating meaningful dialogue about today’s most potent ideas and pressing concerns.