The Archives of Contemporary Arts collects literary estates of artistic provenance. From the beginning, the collection strategy was designed to be interdisciplinary: Thus, the archive contains holdings from the fields of music, literature, film, and architecture. In 2022, the literature collection, which was originally part of the State Collections of Lower Austria, was incorporated into the holdings of the Archives of Contemporary Arts.

The collections vary in terms of composition of materials depending on their origin. Primarily, these consist of work manuscripts, scores, drawings, sketches, screenplays, films, correspondence, biographical documents, and documents of reception such as newspaper clippings, photographs, programs, publications, as well as audio and video recordings.