Gallery was opened in 1979 by architectures Liucija Gelgaudienė and Jonas Navakas. It was dedicated to the famous collector M. Žilinskas who bestowed a collection to the City of Kaunas. However, it appeared that the whole collection will not fit in the gallery, therefore, they started to built another building.

These days, there are a lot of exhibitions by Lithuanian and foreign country artists. They exhibit a lot of pieces of modern Lithuanian and foreign art. Likewise, there is a presentation by professor Algimantas Miškinis who bestowed his art and iconography collection "Lithuanian and Eastern art works collection". Also, there is a Jurgis Mačiūnas "Fluxus" office, where visitors can get acquainted with Ay-o installation, "Black hole" and Takaka Saito installation "My my theatre".