The Krasnodar Regional Art Museum, the oldest in the North Caucasus, was opened in 1904. Its founder, Fyodor Akimovich Kovalenko, donated his collection of paintings, books, and archaeological finds to the city.

Today, the museum's collection holds about 13,000 works of painting, graphics, sculpture, and decorative applied arts. The collection of Russian art covers the main schools of icon painting, such as Novgorod, Moscow, and Northern, and includes bold creative explorations of the 1920s and 1930s, known as avant-garde. Among the particularly valuable directions represented in the museum are Russian avant-garde, Japanese colored woodblock prints of the 18th and mid-19th centuries, 16th-century Dutch art, Russian and Soviet painting, as well as ex-libris from the 18th and 20th centuries.

Currently, the museum's exhibition spaces are complemented by virtual spaces with touch panels and an interactive book titled "Chronicle of Museum Life. Pages of History."