The artists included in SAAM’s collection powerfully evoke themes both universal and specific to the African American experience. Many reflect the tremendous social and political change that occurred from the early Republic to the Civil War, through the rise of industry, the Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance, the post-war years, the Civil Rights movement to present day questions of personal identity and racism.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the museum acquired significant works by African American artists including Sargent Johnson’s Mask and James Hampton’s visionary installation, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly, as well as works by Romare Bearden, William H. Johnson, and Alma Thomas from New York’s Harmon Foundation. In 1980, objects from the Warren Robbins collection became part of the museum, including works by nineteenth century artists Joshua Johnson, the earliest documented professional African American painter; classical landscapes by Edward Mitchell Bannister and Robert Scott Duncanson; and neoclassical sculptures by Edmonia Lewis, the first professional African American sculptor.

Six years later, the museum acquired more than 400 works by folk and self-taught artists from the holdings of Waide Hemphill, Jr. including paintings by Sister Gertrude Morgan and Bill Traylor.

Modern and contemporary artists featured in SAAM's collection include Benny Andrews, Mark Bradford, Nick Cave, Thornton Dial, Sr., Sam Gilliam, Arthur Jafa, Loïs Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Kerry James Marshall, Martin Puryear, Faith Ringgold, Cauleen Smith, Alma Thomas, and Kara Walker, among others.

Important holdings in photography include works by Dawoud Bey, Roy DeCarava, Roland Freeman, Marilyn Nance, Gordon Parks, and James Van Der Zee.