The construction of the county jail in 1884 was the first act of the newly instituted Yellowstone County government, a statement of law and order in the Wild West. The original structure was a small red brick building with a partial basement for storage and two upper floors of cell blocks. In 1916, additions expanded the building to the west and north. But by the 1960s, the jail had outlived its original purpose. When the Yellowstone Art Center opened within its walls in 1964, the building began its second life. The cells that once confined became galleries that liberated, showcasing contemporary art in a region where such work had no institutional home.

The YAM's permanent collection tells a story of deliberate, passionate acquisition. When the museum began collecting, outstanding regional artists like Rudy Autio, Deborah Butterfield, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith were not represented as a group in any Montana museum. The YAM changed that. The Virginia Snook Collection brought the largest gathering of work by cowboy writer and illustrator Will James. The estate of Isabelle Johnson, a pioneering Montana modernist, found its home here. Perhaps most surprisingly for a museum in downtown Billings, the YAM holds hundreds of works of New York Abstract Expressionism in its Poindexter Collection, including pieces by Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and Jules Olitski.

In 2009, the YAM received an extraordinary recognition of its national significance. Herbert and Dorothy Vogel, whose modest New York apartment once housed one of the most important collections of minimalist and conceptual art in America, had partnered with the National Gallery of Art to distribute their collection across the country. Each state would receive 50 works; each state had to select one institution worthy of the gift. Montana chose the YAM. The Vogel gift joined the Peter Norton Family Christmas Project Collection, which ensures that internationally important artists like Yinka Shonibare and Takashi Murakami are represented in Billings. For a regional museum in a city of 120,000, the company is remarkable.

Most museums hide their permanent collections in climate-controlled storage, visible only to curators and conservators. The YAM does things differently. In August 2010, after a $17 million expansion campaign, the museum opened its Visible Vault: a publicly accessible art storage facility that houses the entire permanent collection in an open, visible fashion. The space also includes an artist-in-residence studio, where working artists including Bently Spang have created new work surrounded by the museum's collection. The Yellowstone Art Museum is one of only a handful of art museums in the country to place their entire collection storage on public view.

The YAM remains the only visual arts institution within an immense geographic area of the northern Great Plains. From this position, it serves its community with changing exhibitions, curriculum-based art education, and events that have become regional traditions. The Annual Art Auction, begun in 1969, was the first contemporary art auction in a region that now hosts dozens imitating the YAM's model. Summerfair, launched in 1979, was the region's first outdoor arts and crafts fair. The museum received the Montana Governor's Award for Service to the Arts in 1995. Today, Montana's "flagship" art museum continues to prove that world-class contemporary art can thrive far from the coasts, in a former jail on the high plains.