In addition to temporary exhibitions, Kirkland Museum has three principal collections, all shown together in salon style, allowing visitors to time travel through 150 years of art. The evolving collections contain over 30,000 works by more than 1,500 artists and designers, with about 4,400 works on view.
- One of the most extensive public displays of international decorative art in North America, with examples of every major design period from about 1870 to the present: Arts & Crafts, Aesthetic, Art Nouveau, Glasgow Style, Wiener Werkstätte, De Stijl, Bauhaus, Art Deco, Modern, Pop Art and Postmodern
- Colorado and surrounding states’ art history with fine and decorative art from about 1845 to the present
- A retrospective of Colorado’s distinguished painter, Vance Kirkland (1904–1981), with examples of his five painting periods and over 30 series spanning from realism to surrealism to abstraction
