Browse the Permanent Collection

Here are a few recommendations for beginning your journey through the Permanent Collection. Browse by artist name, media, country of origin, and other terms through the links provided to the left, or browse by collection based on the descriptions below. Objects are added and records updated continually.

Ancient and Classical Art
Many of the first objects to enter the Museum's collection were Egyptian antiquities, including pottery from the Pre-Dynastic to the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, and a table of offering from the First Intermediate Period. Highlights include a recently acquired sarcophagus from the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty. The collection also contains classical pottery, such as a Greek Apulian amphora from the fourth century BCE, and a later Greco-Roman sarcophagus from the Constantinian period.
    Browse Ancient and Classical Art

Asian Art
The Asian collection contains Hindu and Buddhist sculptures from South and Southeast Asia, while works from the Far East include primarily secular paintings, ceramics, textiles, and decorative objects. Highlights of this collection include sculptures from the Chinese Ming dynasty, an Ayutthaya period Walking Buddha from Thailand, and a twentieth century Shiko Munakata Japanese woodblock print.
    Browse Asian Art

African, Oceanic and New World Art
The collection of African art includes more than 2,000 objects from many cultures. The UMFA's holdings also include American Indian objects such as Navajo weavings, Pueblo pottery, and Northwest Coast masks, like a Raven Mask from the Kwakiutl tribe of British Columbia. Pre-Columbian highlights of the collection include Mayan terracotta funerary figures from the island of Jaina. The core of the Oceanic collection comes from the Asmat people of New Guinea.
    Browse African Art, Oceanic Art, American Indian Art, and Pre-Columbian Art

European Art
The UMFA's collection of European art is very strong and represents a millennium of artistic creation. Highlights include works by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Marie-Louise-Elisabeth Vigée le Brun, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Hyacinthe Rigaud, and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Subsets of this collection include Italian and Dutch masterworks.
    Browse European Art, The Italian Collection, The Dutch Collection

American Art
The American collection highlights artistic movements of the eighteenth through the twentieth century, including works by Benjamin West, James Peale, John Singer Sargent, and Thomas Cole. A particular strength of the collection is work by artists who painted in Utah and the American West, such as LeConte Stewart, Maynard Dixon, and Edgar Payne.
    Browse American Art

Modern and Contemporary Art
The UMFA actively collects art from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Highlights of the Modern and Contemporary collection include works by Robert Arneson, Gene Davis, Helen Frankenthaler, Alex Katz, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Robert Smithson, and Wayne Thiebaud.
    Browse Modern and Contemporary Art

Photography
The Museum's photography collection ranges in materials and techniques, spanning the entire history of the medium. Highlights include salt paper prints from the mid-nineteenth century, early twentieth century albumen prints, and modern works by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Weegee, Jerry Uelsmann, and more.
    Browse Photography