The galaxy was discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1783 during one of her systematic comet searches. About half a century later, John Herschel observed it using his 18 inch metallic mirror reflector at the Cape of Good Hope. He wrote, "very bright and large (24′ in length); a superb object.... Its light is somewhat streaky, but I see no stars in it except 4 large and one very small one, and these seem not to belong to it, there being many near..."

In 1961 Allan Sandage wrote in the Hubble Atlas of Galaxies that the Sculptor Galaxy is "the prototype example of a special subgroup of Sc systems....photographic images of galaxies of the group are dominated by the dust pattern. Dust lanes and patches of great complexity are scattered throughout the surface. Spiral arms are often difficult to trace.... The arms are defined as much by the dust as by the spiral pattern."B. Y. Mills, working out of Sydney, discovered that the Sculptor Galaxy is also a fairly strong radio source.^[6]

In 1998 the Hubble Space Telescope took a detailed image of NGC 253.

Although supernovae are generally associated with starburst galaxies, only one supernova has been detected within the Sculptor Galaxy. The supernova, named SN 1940E, is located approximately 54″ southwest of the galaxy's nucleus. It was discovered in November 1940.

At least two techniques have been used to measure distances to Sculptor in the past ten years.

Using the planetary nebula luminosity function method, an estimate of 10.89  Mly (3.34 Mpc) was achieved in 2006.

Sculptor is close enough that the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) method may also be used to estimate its distance. The estimated distance to Sculptor using this technique in 2004 yielded 12.8 ± 1.2 Mly (3.94 ± 0.37 Mpc).

A weighted average of the most reliable distance estimates gives a distance of 11.4 ± 0.7 Mly (3.5 ± 0.2 Mpc).

The Sculptor Galaxy is located at the center of the Sculptor Group, one of the nearest groups of galaxies to the Milky Way.The Sculptor Galaxy (the brightest galaxy in the group) and the companion galaxies NGC 247, PGC 2881, PGC 2933, Sculptor-dE1, and UGCA 15 form a gravitationally bound core near the center of the group. Most other galaxies associated with the Sculptor Group are only weakly gravitationally bound to this core.