The Museum of Fine Arts of the Mari El Republic is a state organization actively participating in the cultural life of the region and its capital, Yoshkar-Ola. The institution was founded in August 1981 as an exhibition venue for the republic and is located in Yoshkar-Ola.

The museum's first exhibition took place in November 1981 under the title "Artists of Theater and Cinema." Since then, many ideas have been implemented to create exhibitions, including solo exhibitions of famous Russian artists such as Nikolai Roerich, Ivan Glazunov, Sergey Andriyaka, and other equally interesting masters.

The museum closely collaborates with major Russian museums, allowing for educational exhibitions that introduce the residents of Mari El to world masterpieces. Since the early 1990s, the museum has actively developed activities to support interethnic relations by organizing exhibitions of artists from different regions of Russia.

In January 1990, the exhibition venue was transformed into a museum of fine arts of republican significance. In the fall of 2007, a branch of the museum, the National Art Gallery, opened in Yoshkar-Ola.

Today, the museum operates based on a permanent exhibition reflecting the ethnographic color of the Mari region and periodically holds exhibitions of various kinds. Its main focus is to introduce visitors to the works of Mari artists. As part of the traditional reporting exhibition "Mari Land," the museum hosts painters from the republic, and in the project "Introducing New Names," it provides platforms for emerging artists, children, and people with disabilities.

The museum building, located on the central street of Yoshkar-Ola, was constructed in 1980 according to the design of architect Babenko and was originally intended for museum purposes. The facade of the building is unusually divided into three equal parts at a 45° angle, creating a play of light and shadow. The area of the exhibition halls is about 1500 sq. m.

The museum's collections include works by the Russian painter K. Kuznetsov, porcelain items by sculptors Sofia Tugarinova and Pavel Kozhin, as well as graphic works from the Soviet and Russian periods. Works by Mari classics and contemporary artists are presented in a separate ethnographic exhibition.