The Smolensk Art Gallery is part of the Smolensk State Museum-Reserve and is located in the historic center of the city, in the building of the former Alexandrov Real School. Its collection features significant works of Russian and Western European painting, icon painting, as well as decorative and applied arts.

The gallery has a rich history that began on May 1, 1920, when it opened in the building of the former District Zemstvo. The foundation of the exhibition consisted of works received from the Department of Fine Arts of the People's Commissariat for Education and the State Museum Fund, as well as from nationalized estates of well-known noble families after the revolution, such as the Baryshnikovs, Panins, Khlyudovs, and Obolenskys. The collection includes a significant assemblage from Princess M. K. Tenisheva. In the 1920s, a purchasing commission was established to enrich the collection.

From 1931 to 2010, the gallery was housed in the building of the Historical and Ethnographic Museum 'Russian Antiquity,' founded by Princess M. K. Tenisheva. During the Great Patriotic War, most of the collection was evacuated to Gorky and then to Novosibirsk, but not all exhibits could be preserved, and many were lost. In 1947, the collection returned to Smolensk, and the gallery reopened to visitors.

At the end of 2010, the gallery moved to the restored building of the Alexandrov Real School, which significantly increased the exhibition space. Today, the Smolensk Gallery is one of the largest in Central Russia, with about five hundred works of painting, graphics, sculpture, and decorative and applied arts displayed across its two floors.