The North Dakota Museum of Art collects contemporary, international art in all media from the early 1970s onwards. It collects the visual history of the region. It is also assembling a survey collection of contemporary Native American art, starting with the early 1970s when the movement emerged. This does not preclude the acceptance of collections that are outside this focus if they would enrich the visual life of our audience, i.e., a historic textile collection.

The Museum’s collection began in the usual way for those institutions not founded upon a significant collection. That is, in the late 1980s and early 1990s the fledgling Museum began to collect individual paintings, works on paper, photographs, and sculpture, often drawn from its own exhibitions organized in-house. Money was hard to come by, but there was so much promise, Founding Director Laurel Reuter remembers. Exhibitions curated by the Museum brought important work into the collection, sometimes purchased from the show, sometimes gifts from the artists. The Museum also commissions works that become exhibitions as well as valuable additions to the collection.

The Museum is currently in the process of cataloging our Permanent Collection of over 3,000 original artowrks. Please check back often for updates.