Prints and drawings comprise over 8,000 works in the Museum's collection. Examples of virtually every medium and style representing many different cultures from the fifteenth century through the present make the University of Notre Dame an important center for study and learning in the arts.

The John D. Reilly Collection of Old Master Drawings is especially strong in Italian and French objects, and includes works by artists, such as Jacopo Tintoretto, Guercino, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, François Boucher, Jacques-Louis David, Edgar Degas, Eugène Delacroix and Camille Corot among many others. The Mr. and Mrs. Allan J. Riley Collection of 18th- and 19th-Century British Drawings offers exemplary sheets by George Romney, Joshua Reynolds, Edwin Landseer and architectural studies by Charles Barry.

The history of printmaking is well illustrated by significant impressions. The earliest datable print in the Museum is Israel van Meckenem's engraving Madonna on a Crescent Moon in a Rosary (after 1478). Other sheets include Lucas van Leyden's Adoration of the Magi (1513), Paul Cézanne's Great Bathers (ca. 1898), and Picasso's Blind Minatour Guided by a Little Girl (1934). An important collection of Rembrandt etchings was given to the museum by Jack and Alfrieda Feddersen in 1991.