The permanent collections of the UIMA contain over 12,000 objects, from masterworks of European and American Art of the last century to a world renowned collection of traditional African Art.

The UIMA opened in 1969, although the art collections of The University of Iowa predate the Museum of Art by several decades. During the 1940s and 1950s, the University’s School of Art and Art History presented exhibitions of contemporary art, and acquired works from these exhibitions. Many of the Museum’s most important paintings were acquired during these years, including Max Beckmann’s Karneval, and Joan Miro’s 1939 A Drop of Dew Falling from the Wing of a Bird Awakens Rosalie Asleep in the Shade of a Cobweb. Jackson Pollock’s Mural was given to the University by Peggy Guggenheim in 1953.

Areas represented in the UIMA collections include African Arts, Art of the Americas, Ceramics, Drawings, Paintings, Photography, Prints, Sculpture, and Other Arts. Currently, the UIMA Digital Collection features over 7,400 of the Museum's 12,000 objects; the rest of the holdings will be added in the near future.

Note: In order to accommodate cross-collection searching of Iowa Gallery materials, some additional standardized terms from the Getty Research Institute's Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) were added to the Museum’s Material/Technique data by UI Libraries staff.