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The museum's art collection includes paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture, and works in film, photography and sound.

The collection originated during the First World War, when the museum acquired works that it had itself commissioned, as well as works commissioned by the Ministry of Information's British War Memorials Committee.

As early as 1920 the art collection held over 3, 000 works and included pieces by John Singer Sargent, Wyndham Lewis, John Nash and Christopher Nevinson.

Notable First World War works include Sargent's Gassed.

The collection expanded again after the Second World War, receiving thousands of works sponsored by the Ministry of Information's War Artists Advisory Committee.

In 1972 the museum established the Artistic Records Committee ( since renamed the Art Commissions Committee ) to commission artists to cover contemporary conflicts.

Commissioned artists include Ken Howard, Linda Kitson, John Keane, Peter Howson, Steve McQueen ( see Queen and Country ) and Langlands & Bell, responding to conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Falklands, the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The collection also includes over twenty thousand items of publicity material such as posters, postcards, and proclamations from both world wars, and more recent material such as posters issued by anti-war organisations such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Stop the War Coalition.

The museum's collection is represented in digital resources such as the Visual Arts Data Service ( VADS ), and Google Art Project.

In 2012 the museum reported the total size of its art collection as 84, 980 items.