The museum was founded in 1960 on the basis of the art collection of the Archangel Local History Museum. The collection of the art museum at that time contained about one thousand and a half works of art and held mostly works by artists from the area. It also included few works of Ancient Russian art and about thirty paintings by Russian artists, donated to Archangel by the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1916 and by the Russian State Museum of St Petersburg in 1930. In contrast to the most famous Russian museums whose origins lie in gifts and bequests from a variety of donors and patrons, the Archangel Museum of Fine Arts developed its collections by means of an active acquisitions policy based on numerous expeditions to outlying parts of the region mostly in 1960-s – 1980-s. As a result of this policy the Museum has a unique collection of Ancient North Russian art (medieval icons and wooden sculptures), rich holdings of North Russian folk art (peasant festive and every-day costumes, embroideries, weaves, wooden carved and painted objects, artistic metalwork, ceramics), works by almost all the best-known Russian artists of the 18th-20th centuries
