Founded in 2015, the MASI Collection comprises works by Swiss and international artists, spanning from the 1920s to the present day. Among the most significant contributions to its growth are the donation by Giancarlo and Danna Olgiati (works from the Bauhaus period to the present), the donation by Jocelyne and Fabrice Petignat (contemporary art from the Swiss and international scenes), the donation by Fernando and Patricia Zari Malacrida of an important group of works from Joseph Beuys’s Difesa della Natura cycle, and works gifted by artists such as Renzo Ferrari, Marcel Dupertuis, Fiorenza Bassetti, Markus Raetz, and Wolfgang Laib.

The Associazione Amici Sostenitori del Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana has enriched the MASI Collection with works by artists including Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Fausto Melotti, Pietro Consagra, Giulio Paolini, Not Vital, Markus Raetz, Wolfgang Laib, and Nicolas Party.

The Collection of the Canton of Ticino includes mainly works dating from the 19th and 20th centuries, with a few significant earlier pieces, such as paintings by Pier Francesco Mola and Giuseppe Antonio Petrini. The collection is divided into three main sections: the Collection of the Canton of Ticino, the Collection of the former Museo Cantonale d’Arte, and the Monte Verità Collection.

The Collection of the Canton of Ticino offers a broad overview of art from the region. Since 1975, the holdings have been expanded through acquisitions by the Cantonal Commission for Fine Arts. Many works are housed in the State Archives, administrative buildings, representative offices, and schools throughout the Canton.

The Collection of the former Museo Cantonale d’Arte primarily features works by artists connected to the region and to the museum’s exhibition activities. Alongside this core, the collection includes works by major figures in modern and contemporary art history such as Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Gabriel Orozco, Rineke Dijkstra, and Thomas Struth. Deposits from the Swiss Confederation, the Gottfried Keller Foundation, and the Kunsthaus Zürich have added important works by artists who have shaped the history of Swiss and international art, including Cuno Amiet, Edoardo Berta, Carlo Carrà, Filippo Franzoni, Achille Funi, Ferdinand Hodler, Johannes R. Schürch, and Mario Sironi.
Among the most important donations are the Lenggenhager-Tschannen family’s gift of works by French masters of the late nineteenth century, the Fritz Glarner bequest, and the donation by Count Panza di Biumo, which represents one of the most significant post-minimal art ensembles in Switzerland, featuring artists such as Stuart Arends, Barry X Ball, Lawrence Carroll, Ettore Spalletti, Roni Horn, and Thomas Schütte.
The prestigious holdings of the Locarno VideoArt Festival, including complete works by leading exponents of video art, complement this panorama with one of the most important international collections tracing the development of multimedia artistic languages.

The Monte Verità Collection, housed mainly within the buildings of the Monte Verità Foundation in Ascona, originated from the donation of Baron Eduard von der Heydt. It includes numerous important Asian graphic works and paintings from the 17th to the 20th century by artists such as Angelika Kauffmann, Alexandre Calame, Conrad Felixmüller, and Amédée Ozenfant.

The City of Lugano Collection includes works by artists of Ticinese origin from the 12th century to the present day. The most significant core focuses on the local and Lombard art scene from the late 19th to the early 20th century, featuring the remarkable group of pre-Futurist works by Umberto Boccioni. Works by the Ticinese painters Giovanni Serodine, Pier Francesco Mola, and Giuseppe Antonio Petrini represent important examples from earlier centuries.
The initial nucleus of the collection was formed by the Antonio Caccia bequest of 1893, consisting of a heterogeneous group of works dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Over time, important deposits from the Confederation (Ticinese and Swiss artists, including Giovanni Giacometti) and from the Fondazione Gottfried Keller (Vincenzo Vela, Filippo Franzoni, Giuseppe Antonio Petrini) were added.
Among the most important donations are that of the Heirs of Gabriele Chiattone in 1961 (including a large body of works by Umberto Boccioni and pieces by Cesare Tallone, Leonardo Dudreville, Tranquillo Cremona, Achille Funi); the 1965 bequest of Adolph and Carla Milich Fassbind, comprising works by Milich himself and by major French masters from the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Claude Monet, Eugène Boudin, Édouard Vuillard, André Derain, Henri Rousseau, Henri Matisse); and the 1977 Francesco Messina donation.
In 1978, the Aargau artist Wilhelm Schmid donated to the City of Lugano numerous works and his house in Brè with all its contents; in 1983, it was opened to the public as the Museo Schmid, where a selection of his works remains on view, including notable examples from the period of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity).
In 1980, the Lugano-born artist Carlo Cotti donated around one hundred works by contemporary artists and a large group of his own works, establishing the Fondo Comunale Carlo Cotti with the aim of acquiring works by emerging artists.
In 1996, Aligi Sassu donated to the City of Lugano an important group of works, managed by the Fondazione Aligi Sassu e Helenita Olivares, covering his entire artistic output.
The collection also includes works on paper from the Biennale internazionale di Bianco e Nero, held at Villa Ciani between 1950 and 1968, as well as sculptures located in the city’s public spaces.