June 29th, 1885 officially opened the first Russian Provincial Art Museum named after AN Radishchev. Choice of Saratov was not accidental, AN Radishchev - the great Russian writer, poet and philosopher, was born at the family estate, located in the Saratov province.

The opening of the museum was unique for several reasons. Radishchev Museum in its original form combined the art, ethnographic, paleontological, local history, the memorial and the industrial style at the same time. The scale and number of works of art can compete only metropolitan museums, for which Radishchev Museum got its second name "Hermitage of the Volga region". The doors of the museum were opened to people of all classes, and the first-day June 30th, 1885 was a day of free admission. It is easy to imagine what it meant to Saratov, at that time, where the population of a hundred and twenty thousand people had no lighting, water supply was only in the central area, there was a decent hospital, a small theater was made of wood and can accommodate only a fraction of visitors.

The founding father of the museum became a landscape painter AP Bogolyubov, grandson of Alexander Radishchev. He life donated a collection of works of art and regular contributions to the development of painting in Saratov. Developed building project St. Petersburg architect IV Strom, and personally approved the Emperor Alexander III, who also donated the museum a number of paintings from the collection.

Nowadays Radishchev Museum has a network of branches across the province of Saratov House Museum (Memorial) VE Borisov-Musatov and Pavel Kuznetsov in Saratov; AA Gallery Mylnikova Engels; branch in Balakovo (which exhibited a collection of works from the collections of the museum Radischevskaya); House-Museum (art and Memorial) KS Petrov-Vodkin in g.Hvalynske.

Today Saratov Radishchev Museum is one of the most successful European-class museums. The museum's collection of more than 30 thousand exhibits from antiquity to modern times. The exhibition presents more than 500 works of art 1 the museum collection. These are: religious objects and icons, foreign and Russian sculpture, painting and drawing, old books, articles of decorative and applied arts of the East and the West.

The pride of the museum - works of artists, the Wanderers: V.Perov, I.Kramskoy, Repin, Surikov. The collection of works of art also includes paintings; FS Rokotoff, KP Bryullov, AK Savrasov, Ivan Aivazovsky, KS Petrov-Vodkin, Pyotr Konchalovsky, II Levitan, VA Serov, KA Korovin, VE Borisov-Musatov, PV Kuznetsova, Marc Chagall and Kazimir Malevich, Robert Falk, S. Rose, D. Vasari, Barbizon school Corot, Troyon K., C. Daubigny and other great masters.