With my personal preference of paintings to sculptures when it comes to "Fine Art", this museum for me was the least interesting among the four such museums I visited on my journey through South America (with the other three museums being those in Santiago, Buenos Aires & Sao Paulo), but yes "definitely impressive" in this museum (aside from my personal preference) is its great collection of life-sized sculptures nicely displayed in two rows in a long room and also some more similarly arranged but in shorter rows in another room (really a "pretty great" spectacle in each room as you walk through between its two rows of sculptures). So yes, not many great paintings to find here, but there are some that I liked which are actually not by European artists or such but just "local scenes" depicting Rio (which as seen in those paintings seemed "quite rural" at about the time of a century ago or so), and also two noteworthy great paintings are a big portrait of Emperor Pedro I & a "royal assembly" scene or such with him among his subordinates (which I actually also found an identical one but quite a bit "bigger-sized" than the one here later at Palacio Itamaraty in Brasilia).
Coming by metro, Carioca Station (both Lines 1 & 2) is where to get off followed by just a short walk of 5 minutes or so to this museum: a left turn after coming out of the station then to the right when getting to the "second intersecting" street where this museum is to the left after a short walk (and where to the right which is across the street from this museum is Theatro Municipal with quite an attractive exterior of gold upper trims & beautiful green domes above but the interior of which I only got to just inside the entrance where there was a small performance going on at the time).