The Bellarmine is home to encyclopedic permanent collections, with objects ranging from pre-Columbian sculptures to Tang pottery, from Medieval jewelry to Renaissance paintings. The museum enjoys fruitful collaborative relationships with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cloisters (from whom it holds 24 objects on long-term loan) and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, among others.
The Bellarmine Museum of Art holds a rich and varied collection of paintings, sculpture and decorative art objects, including ten paintings by masters from the Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods - works gifted to the University by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation via Bridgeport's Discovery Museum (formerly the Museum of Art, Industry and Science). The BMA also maintains a large selection of historic plaster casts after important works from ancient Greece and Rome, including eight that were donated to the University by the Acropolis Museum in Athens in July 2010. In addition, the museum showcases a range of non-Western art objects (including pre-Columbian vessels, 19th-century South East Asian sculptures, and African masks), and is fortunate enough to hold twenty-four objects from the Celtic, Byzantine, Romanesque, and Medieval periods on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters.
The BMA installs up to four special exhibitions each year. These shows, which embrace a wide range of themes and academic disciplines, are intended to fulfill the BMA's commitment to examining artifacts through an array of viewpoints and differing perspectives.