June 29, 1885 was opened Russia's first provincial art Museum named after A. N. Radishcheva. The choice of the city of Saratov was not random, A. N. Radishchev – the great Russian writer, poet and philosopher, was born on the family estate, located in the Saratov province.

The opening of the Museum was unique for several reasons. Radischev Museum in its original form combined artistic, ethnographic, paleontological, natural history, memorial and industrial style at the same time. Scale and number of works of art could compete only Metropolitan museums, for which Radischev Museum got its second name "the Hermitage of the Volga region". Museum doors were open to people of all classes and the first day-June 30, 1885, was a day of free admission. It is easy to imagine what it meant for Saratov, in those days, where the population in one hundred and twenty thousand people had no lighting, the water was only in the Central region, there was a decent hospital, a small theatre was made of wood and could accommodate only a portion of applicants.

The founding father of the Museum was the landscape painter A. P. Bogolyubov, grandson of Alexander Radishchev. He for life has donated a collection of works of art and regular donations to the development of painting in Saratov. Developed the project of the building of the St. Petersburg architect I. V. Shtrom and approved personally by the Emperor Alexander III, who also donated to the Museum a number of paintings from his collection.

Nowadays Radischev Museum has a network of branches across the Saratov province: the house-Museum (memorial) V. E. Borisov-Musatov and Pavel Kuznetsov in Saratov; gallery A. A. Mylnikov Engels; branch in Balakovo (exhibiting a collection of works from the collections of the Radishchev Museum), the house-Museum of art and memorial) of K. S. Petrov-Vodkin in the city of Khvalynsk.

To date, the Radishchev Museum in Saratov is one of the most successful museums of European class. The Museum's collection of over 30 thousand exhibits from antiquity to modern times. The exhibition presents more than 1,500 works of art the Museum's collection. It: religious objects and icons, foreign and Russian sculpture, paintings and drawings, old books, decorative-applied arts of East and West.

The pride of the Museum is the works of artists of the Wanderers: V. Perov, I. Kramskoy, I. Repin, V. Surikov. The collection of works of art includes paintings; F. S. Rokotov, K. P. Bryullov, A. K. Savrasov, I. K. Aivazovsky, K. S. Petrov-Vodkin, p. P. Konchalovsky, I. I. Levitan, V. Serov, K. A. Korovin, V. E. Borisov-Musatov, Pavel Kuznetsov, M. Chagall, K. Malevich, R. Falk, S. rose, D. Vasari, artists of the Barbizon school, Corot, K. Troyon, Charles Daubigny, and other eminent masters.