Funds for the building were donated by Herbert F. Johnson, a graduate of Cornell's Class of 1922, the late president and chairman of S C Johnson of Racine, Wisconsin.

The Johnson Museum has one of the finest collections of art in Upstate New York State and is recognized as one of the most important university museums in the country. The permanent collection consists of more than 35,000 works of art. Aside from the outstanding Asian collection, its greatest strengths are in graphic arts and photographs ranging from the fifteenth century to the present, modern and contemporary painting and sculpture, European art from ancient times to the present, African sculpture and textiles, and pre-Columbian sculpture and ceramics.