The museum was founded in 1914 by members of the local society of lovers of fine arts as a monument to the artist Vasily Vereshchagin. The first collection of the museum was housed in the former guardhouse of the military department and included works that were donated by the Academy of Arts, the Russian Museum of Alexander III, as well as personal belongings that were sent by Vereshchagin's widow, Lydia Vasilievna. On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, the museum's collection consisted of almost a thousand works. During the Nazi occupation, the museum was plundered. In 1945, the museum restored its work in a small old manor. Some of the works of V.V. Vereshchagin, his personal belongings, the works of I.K.Aivazovsky, R.G.Sudkovsky, M.M. Antokolsky and other artists were found. During the 1970-1980s, the museum's collection was regularly replenished with receipts from the directorate of art exhibitions of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Union of Artists of the USSR, the Ukrainian SSR and other organizations, as well as from private collections. In 1986 the museum moved to a new spacious house. In its halls on the second and third floors, an exposition of Russian art was unfolded, which includes works of painting, sculpture, arts and crafts, and graphics. Works of Western European art are exhibited in a separate hall of the museum.