The core exhibits of the museum include a huge number of works, more than 26 thousand pieces.
The permanent display consists of monographic halls of the key Kazan artists — Nikolay Feshin, master of portrait, Baki Urmanche, founder of the Tatar fine arts, and Haris Yakupov, most prominent painter of the post-war Tatarstan.
The museum helps trace the development of the Russian avant-garde — abstractionism represented by Vasily Kandinsky, primitive paintings by Mikhail Larionov and Natalya Goncharova, and cubo-futurism by Aristarkh Lentulov.
The main display also contains Old Russian icons dating back to the 16th century, European engravings by Albrecht Dürer and Jacques Callot, canvases by Russian masters of the 18th -19th centuries, such as Vasily Tropinin, Ivan Aivazovsky, Ivan Shishkin, Valentin Serov and Ilya Repin.
