The Museum maintains a singular focus on American art to provide a panoramic view of American artistic achievement. The collections now number approximately 8300 paintings, works on paper, sculptures, photographs and illustrations by American artists.
Holdings are particularly strong in colonial portraiture, 19th-century still life, post-Civil War figural painting and sculpture, the Hudson River School, American Impressionism, and the Ash Can School. The important mural series The Arts of Life in America by Thomas Hart Benton is here.
The NBMAA is on the Connecticut Art Trail.