The centre is a university museum operated by Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), and is housed in a renovated and remodelled former warehouse building at Gould and Bond Streets on TMU's campus.

The centre includes gallery, collections, teaching, research and exhibition spaces and shares the building with the School of Image Arts.

[1] The new building, designed by Toronto architect Donald Schmitt of Diamond and Schmitt Architects[2] contains: The centre was in part created to display some of the 292,000 photos from Black Star which it had received as an anonymous donation.

[4] In March 2015, the museum has acquired the archive of Berenice Abbott, which included more than 6,000 photos and 7,000 negatives.

[6] This followed the renaming of Ryerson University to Toronto Metropolitan University in April 2022, in response to concerns about Egerton Ryerson's influence on the Canadian Indian residential school system.