The first floor of the museum is used for exhibitions. Here you can see displays from leading world museums, solo exhibitions of contemporary artists, and works from the museum's own collection. The second floor features permanent exhibitions such as "Contemporary Art of Korea," "Decorative and Applied Arts of Japan," and "Russian Art of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries."

The museum staff actively engages in research activities, having published over 50 scientific articles, catalogs, and monographs. The museum also conducts extensive educational work, including tours, lectures, and classes using exhibits from its collections. The ceremony "Russian Tea Party," organized for residents and guests of the Sakhalin region, is particularly popular. For over 15 years, the museum has operated a "Perception School" for children aged 3 to 6.

The museum was founded in 1983 by order of the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR, and its exhibitions opened on March 25, 1989.

Currently, the museum's collection contains about 11,500 items.

The formation of the museum fund occurred from various sources, including the State Museum and Exhibition Fund "Rosizo," the Russian Cultural Fund, the Research Institute of Artistic Industry, the State Russian Museum, and unions of artists from former Soviet republics such as Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, and Latvia. A significant portion of the collection of Russian art from the 19th and early 20th centuries came from art salons in Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as from private collections.

The museum is located in a building that previously belonged to the Hokkaido Takushoku Bank, built in 1930 by an unknown Japanese architect in the late modern style. In the mid-1980s, the building was renovated and transferred to the museum by the Sakhalin branch of the State Bank of the USSR. This building, located in the center of South Sakhalinsk, is a unique historical and architectural monument of the Sakhalin region.