The department of painting and sculpture oversees the European art collection before 1900 and the American art collection before 1945.

Together they include more than 3,000 artworks and are composed of painting, sculpture, and prints.

The department also curates the internationally renowned Berger Collection of mostly British paintings, drawings, and medieval works of art, as well as a significant collection of predominantly French eighteenth- and nineteenth-century drawings on long-term loan to the museum by a private collector.