As part of Plymouth City Council, The Box takes responsibility for the City’s civic collections housed in the Civic Centre, Council House and Plymouth Guildhall, and administers private loans to the city as well as lending museum collection items to the sites.
The collections are largely made up of paintings with local relevance for the city from works by local artists such as William Payne and Benjamin Robert Haydon to local topographical scenes such as harbour views of Devon and Cornish landscapes. In addition, many works have been donated to the collection and depict Plymouth’s twinned towns of Gdynia (Poland), Brest (France) and Novorossiysk (Russia).