It was formed in its main body in the 1920s – 1930s as a result of transfers of exhibits from the State Museum Fund (section of furniture and bronzes, section of applied art. Among them were works of art from the known Russian collections: Yusupovs, Shuvalovs, Kochubeys, Sheremetievs, representatives of the tsarist family Romanovs, etc.

        Works of an applied art have arrived also from museums of the Western - Siberian branch of the Russian Geographical Society and the Omsk M.A. Vrubel Artistic - Industrial Technical School.

        Chronological frameworks of a collection originally embraced the 17th - beginning of the 20th century. The collection represented applied art of Russia, the Western Europe and the countries of the East.

        Already by the end of the 1920s the collection numbered more than 1500 exhibits. In a structure of the “gold fund” of the collection of applied art there are works made of bronze, stone, bone, enamel, wood, etc.; and also furniture, lace, embroideries, lighting devices, various decorative items and so forth.

        We can distinguish works of the known domestic and West-European masters: Faberge (stone plastic), V.О. and J.V. Kokovins, M.S. Laulin (stone vases of Ekaterinburg and Kolyvan factories), J. Rafaelli (mosaics), P.-F. Tomir (bronze).

        The collection was considerably replenished in the 1960s – 1990s due to purchases from inhabitants of Omsk, transfers from the Ministry of Culture of the USSR and the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, from the State museums of the Moscow Kremlin, the State Hermitage, and also from museums of the Omsk high schools (the State University and the State Pedagogical University). These arrivals not only have expanded historically developed part of the collection and its chronological borders (from the third thousand BC up to the end of the 20th century), but also have allowed forming two independent large units: fund of precious metals (the museum gold storeroom) and a collection of ancient Siberian art (the Siberian collection of museum).