The Tolyatti Art Museum, originally known as the Tolyatti Picture Gallery, opened its doors in 1987. It is located on the first floor of a modern residential building constructed in the 1970s.

Since its founding, the museum has focused on two main areas: building its collection and organizing art exhibitions. Today, its holdings include about ten thousand works of painting, graphics, sculpture, and decorative applied arts, most of which were created in the second half of the 20th century. The core of the collection consists of paintings and graphics transferred to the museum by the exhibition directorate of the Union of Artists of the USSR and the Republican Center for Art Exhibitions and Promotion of Visual Arts of the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR. The painting collection includes works by masters such as E.A. Aslamazyan, L.I. Tabenkin, D.A. Nalbandyan, N.N. Brandt, M.K. Kantor, M.P. Konchalovsky, and others.

The graphic collection features etchings by S.M. Nikireev, autolithographs by E.B. Bernstein, engravings by M.M. Mechev for the "Tale of Bygone Years," as well as 50 works of contemporary Chinese graphics donated by the Luoyang Artists' House. The collections of artistic glass and children's drawings from the late 20th century also attract attention.

In 2005, a Board of Trustees was established at the museum, which facilitated significant exhibitions from leading museums in Russia. Among them are: "Northern Capital," "From Dürer to Goya. Three Centuries of European Engraving," an exhibition from the Irbit State Museum of Fine Arts, an exhibition by Zurab Tsereteli, "Italian Art of the 20th Century," an exhibition of Chinese artists, an exhibition from the school of S. Andriyaka, and the exhibition "Images of Italy in the Engravings of G.B. Piranesi and Italian Masters of the 16th-18th Centuries" from the collection of the Samara Regional Art Museum, "Dolls of the Past Century," "In the Grip of Stroke and Line. Masterpieces of French Graphics of the 17th and 19th Centuries" from the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts, a contemporary Japanese graphics exhibition, and others.

The Tolyatti Art Museum is a center of cultural life in the city. Since 1997, it has organized an art competition for children aged 4 to 16 called "Raduzhka," which takes place every two years. The best works enrich the museum's collection of children's drawings. In 2012, the anniversary year for the competition, it was held for the tenth time and gained international status. Over the years, the geography of participants has significantly expanded: initially, it included only Tolyatti children, but in 2012, participants from Israel, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus joined. Works also came from various regions of Russia, including Krasnoyarsk, Krasnodar, Perm, Primorsky, and Khabarovsk Krais, the Republic of Dagestan, Mordovia, Mari El, Bashkortostan, Sakha, Khakassia, as well as from Moscow, Leningrad, Saratov, Omsk, Rostov, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, and other regions.