Nizhnevartovsk Museum of local history was founded on 1 November 1973. As a mentoring organization, supervising the activities of the Museum, approved the trust "Nizhnevartovskneftegas". The first Director was T.D. Shuvaev - ethnographer, historian, teacher, Honorary citizen of the city of Nizhnevartovsk.

    February 1, 1978, the Museum became a branch of the regional Museum called "Museum of the development of oil resources of the Middle Ob region". In 1994, the Museum changes the status to the Municipal institution and the complex was given the name of T.D. Shuvaev. In the structure of the Museum complex on 11 March 2003 opened a branch of "the Museum of the history of Russian life", which is located in the centre of historic core of the city - Old Vartovsk. It is a historical building consisting of a wooden two-storey house and complex of outbuildings.

    In 2004, Ethnographic Museum complex named after T.D. Shuvaev transferred to a memorial monument "to Soldiers-internationalists", which is located at the Komsomolsk Avenue Nizhnevartovsk. It symbolizes the eternal memory of Nizhnevartovsk killed in military operations in Afghanistan and in the North Caucasus.

    In 2010, the institution acquires its present name. More than three decades of existence of the Museum its employees collected and formed a collection of objects of the history of technology, Russian life, Khanty Ethnography, archeology, paleontology, numismatics, collections of art. The Museum holds more than 37.000 units of visual, material, written sources that reveal the history of the village, district, city of Nizhnevartovsk