The museum, located in Samara in the Klodt mansion, is a cultural heritage site. Currently, the Children's Art Gallery holds about 21,000 exhibits, of which around 18,000 are children's drawings. The collection includes international and gold funds of children's drawings, as well as works of painting by adult artists (154 exhibits), graphics (226 exhibits), decorative and applied arts (225 exhibits), dolls (216 exhibits), antique household items, including ethnography (1,871 exhibits), rare books (65 exhibits), and photographs (565 exhibits).

The museum's location in a merchant mansion inspired staff to collect items illustrating the era in which the Klodts and Shcherbachevs lived. These exhibits allow visitors, both children and adults, to touch history, look through a stereoscope, hear a musical box and a physiharmonica, and familiarize themselves with advertisements from that time. The collection of antique household items includes about 1,500 exhibits, including ethnographic items, furniture, and records.

The collection "Exclusive Doll of the Klodt Mansion" began to form in 2002 with the appearance of the first dolls from the "Carnival of Burgundy Fashion" by Olga Bakanova. The idea of creating a creative workshop for costume dolls arose a year earlier at the initiative of the gallery director Nina Vasilyevna Ievleva. To date, the workshop has created 10 collections of dolls from various eras and styles, organized numerous exhibitions, including displays in Venice and the Moscow Kremlin. In 2012, Olga Bakanova was awarded the title of "Honored Worker of Culture of the Russian Federation."

The Children's Art Gallery opened on December 26, 1990, and became one of the first children's museums in modern Russia. Its founder and permanent director, Nina Vasilyevna Ievleva, is an honored worker of culture in Russia. In 1991, the city transferred the dilapidated mansion of I. A. Klodt on Kuybyshev Street to the gallery. After five years of restoration, in 1995, the gallery began its new life in the restored 19th-century building.

The interiors of the mansion are perfectly suited for children's exhibitions, creating a comfortable atmosphere that does not overwhelm the viewer. Household items from 100-120 years ago allow children to touch history. After the gallery was established in 1990, workshops for developing children's creativity were opened. Currently, the gallery has workshops for children aged 5 to 12 led by teachers N. M. Vasylyuk, I. V. Denisova, N. I. Zyryanova, a design and architecture workshop by M. N. Samsonova, a decorative and applied arts workshop by E. M. Shadrina, and a ceramics workshop by K. Kolinko. For teenagers aged 12-17, there are composition workshops by N. V. Ievleva, academic drawing and painting by O. A. Bakanova and O. V. Danchina. Admission to the workshops is based on the child's homework, without exams.

The museum's exhibitions are diverse. The main focus is on children's works, including international projects, thematic exhibitions, and solo exhibitions of children. There are also exhibitions of professional artists and students, uniting artists of different generations. Exhibitions of traditional national cultures, folk art, and crafts, as well as interactive educational exhibitions and historical and local history projects, are of particular interest.

In 2006, a new hall "Dictionary of Arts" opened in the museum. Since 2008, a program for blind and visually impaired children has been implemented, including reliefs "Ancient World" and "Art of the Middle Ages," and work continues on the series "Rus. Pre-Mongol Period."