The Moscow State Museum of Modern Art is located on five sites in the historical center of the city. The main collection is located in the former mansion of the merchant Gubin, built in 1793 according to the design of the architect Kazakov and which is an architectural monument of the 18th century in the style of classicism.
The founder and first director of the museum, which opened its doors to visitors on December 15, 1999, was the President of the Russian Academy of Arts Zurab Tsereteli. The beginning of the formation of a collection dedicated to the history of the development of avant-garde art of the 20th and 21st centuries was the donation of paintings from Tsereteli's personal collection to the museum. The main part of the collection, numbering 10,000 exhibits, is represented by works by domestic authors such as Kazimir Malevich, Marc Chagall, Robert Falk, Wassily Kandinsky, David Burliuk, Ilya Kabakov. The pride of the museum is the collection of works by the Georgian primitive artist Niko Pirosmani. Many of these works were returned to their homeland from foreign archives and auctions. Of the works of foreign artists, graphic sheets by Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso, sculptures by Salvador Dali, paintings by Henri Rousseau and other outstanding authors should be noted.
The museum's funds also contain individual works by representatives of artistic movements of the 1920s: socialist realism, Soviet impressionism, masters of the so-called "quiet art" of the 1930s-1950s.
Contemporary Russian contemporary art is represented not only by paintings, but also by photographs and various installations.
Some of the halls are used for exhibitions of various sizes - from shows by emerging authors to solo exhibitions by famous artists.