Cultural precedents were the 1855 Castlemaine Mechanics Institute which included a library; the School of Mines whose art teacher C. Steiner in 1908 taught engineering, surveying, architecture and fine art students;[2] and numbers of artists, including S. T. Gill,[3] Samuel Calvert, George French Angas,[4] and early photographers Antoine Fauchery[5] and Richard Daintree,[6] had visited to document the swarming goldfields.

A loan exhibition of 30 works in the Stock Exchange Room of the Town Hall launched the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum on 24 October 1913.

[21] joined by direct loans by artists, and by the National Gallery of Victoria which contributed Franz Courtens' Morning, David Wynfield's Death of the Duke of Buckingham, Robert Dowling's Sheikh and His Son Entering Cairo;[22] Hermann Eschke's Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight; Cave Thomas' Canute Listening to the Monks at Ely; and Louis Buvelot's Summer afternoon, Templestowe.

"[32] Since 17 November 1983 Castlemaine Art Museum is classified by The National Trust (revised 3 August 1998), which notes its significance as; … an exceptional building in its intent and execution and … historically important as one of the earliest examples of the "modern movement" in provincial Victoria.

That year in a visit to Castlemaine the Hon George Prendergast enabled a deputation to seek a grant to augment the building fund, to which he offered £1000 on the basis of £1 for every £2 raised locally.

Despite the onset of the Depression, £3,250 was raised in only six weeks from private individuals and companies the Bank of Australasia, Ball & Welch and Bryant & May,[11] augmented by the promised State government grant of £1,000, and afterward a further £500.

[35] Architect Percy Meldrum, who trained in the United States presented to a reluctant management committee a "modern and artistic" design for the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum (as it was then named) in an American Art-deco style.

The symmetrical facade includes a bas-relief in artificial stone featuring a female figure that symbolises Castlemaine surrounded, on the right, by two attendant gold-miners of the past, and artist and sculptor at left.

The opening was held on the 18th of that month by the Governor of Victoria Lord Somers at a ceremony conducted in front of a crowd at the entrance to the Gallery that flowed across the street.

[45] A third space for special and temporary exhibitions was funded by a gift of $12,500 from the Stoneman Foundation after which it is named, and a State Government grant of $26,000 and was opened by Premier Rupert Hamer on 14 September 1973, on the occasion of the Gallery's sixtieth anniversary.

The high vaulted ceiling naturally lit via UV-filtered skylights has a hidden shutter system to permit blacking out for exhibitions that require artificial lighting only.

[36] An artificially lit small prints and drawings gallery is, since 2020, set aside for CAM's Orbit program; a series of exhibitions by artists who live and work in Central Victoria.

One artist, and one of the wealthiest, associated with the Gallery, A.M.E. Bale was vehement in her distaste for anything 'modern,'[47] echoing the views of then National Gallery of Victoria director James Stuart MacDonald who, of the 1939 Herald exhibition of contemporary French and English painting sponsored by Sir Keith Murdoch, proclaimed, 'They are exceedingly wretched paintings ... putrid meat ... the product of degenerates and perverts ... filth'.

A demonstration of these conservative values was the Gallery's 1933 commission to have painter W B Mclnnes travel to England to paint portraits of the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI).

When added to existing holdings of 105 oils, 57 water colours and 76 etchings, drawings and prints,[35] the purchase was welcomed by Clive Turnbull, since 1942 the Murdoch-appointed art critic at the Herald, who considered the cost ... ... a good price by any Australian standards.

"Desolation," as this large oil is called, is one of the series painted by Russell Drysdale — in some peoples' view the most significant of all contemporary Australian artists — after his visit to the erosion country of New South Wales last year.

[52] Even so, the purchase coincided with that of Rupert Bunny's semi-allegorical 1932 Stepping Stones,[53][54] and the policy remained still to prefer figurative studies, landscape and portraiture, but to permit semi-abstract works.

[56] It relied also on direct donations of works, such as Billy McInnes's large canvas Ploughing and etchings by Norman Lindsay given by Sir Baldwin Spencer,[57][28] and Dame Nellie Melba's gifts of a portrait of her father David Mitchell by Hugh Ramsey[58] and Frederick McCubbin's Golden Sunlight.

[67] Government funding tended to be piecemeal; deputations to MPs during the war years and another during the Depression received minor dispensation,[68][41] $319 from the Australia Council in 1985 was given for "purchase of crafts for public display and permanent collection",[69] and in 1987 Minister for the Arts, Race Mathews, announced minor capital grants including $60,000 approved to enable the Castlemaine Art Gallery to extend its storage space.

[74] The museum, housed in the basement, presents the history of Castlemaine and its region in objects, maps, models, diaoramas, photographs and prints, including a large group of hand-coloured lithographs from watercolours by S. T. Gill; pithy vignettes of life on the goldfields.

Earlier artists include Louis Buvelot, Fred McCubbin, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Violet Teague, May Vale, Walter Withers, Ethel Spowers, David Davies, Rupert Bunny, Max Meldrum, Ethel Carrick, E. Phillips Fox, Jessie Traill, John Russell, Christian Waller, Hugh Ramsay, Clarice Beckett, A.M.E. Bale, Arthur Lindsay and John Longstaff.

Modernists include Margaret Preston, Clifford Last, Ola Cohn, Roland Wakelin, Joy Hester, Russell Drysdale, Judy Cassab, Fred Williams, Klytie Pate, John Brack, Albert Tucker, John Perceval, Clifton Pugh, Lloyd Rees, Danila Vassilieff, and Roger Kemp.

More contemporary artists include Rick Amor, Ray Crooke, Rona Green, Betty Kuntiwa Pumani, Peter Benjamin Graham, Fiona Orr, Robert Jacks, Jeffrey Smart, Diane Mantzaris, Ian Armstrong, Jenny Watson, and Brian Dunlop.

[82] Portraits of Australian artists by Australian photographers Max Dupain, David Moore, Richard Beck, Jack Cato, Pegg Clarke, Connie Christie, Sonia Payes, Michel Lawrence, Joyce Evans, Mina Moore, Jacqueline Mitelman and Olive Cotton and others form another specialist concentration in the collection initiated by previous Director Peter Perry.

Also in the Buda collection are original artworks by mostly early twentieth century Australian artists including William Blamire-Young, Margaret Preston, Lionel Lindsay, Mildred Lovett, Ursula Ridley Walker and Alice Newell, studio pottery from the 1920s and 1930s by Klytie Pate, Philippa James and John Campbell, and hand-printed textiles of Melbourne artists Michael O’Connell, Frances Mary Burke and Lucy Newell.

Volunteers administered and managed the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum for the first six decades of operations, opening Monday-Sunday 1-5pm and 2.30-5pm Sunday,[84] but for a period having to close for lack of a caretaker.

[14] This transition to being a managed cultural organisation was handled largely by Beth Sinclair (1919–2014) who, when she moved to Castlemaine in 1953, was introduced to the Gallery by her husband Alec who was on its committee.

[88] She was rigorous in her management of the collection and the daily running of the Gallery, and established a network of individuals and organisations all over Australia for purchases and loans of artworks and a regular schedule of exhibitions.

[107] Naomi Cass, previously director of the Centre for Contemporary Photography, was appointed Director, CAM Renewal, in January 2019, and reopened the gallery, free of charge to visitors at the request of the benefactors and, after some refurbishment in November,[108] in December launched the Strategic Plan for Castlemaine Art Museum 2019–2023 – connecting people through Art, History and Ideas[82] In the 2019-20 financial year the budget returned to surplus.

[112] As early as 1928 Castlemaine Art Gallery offered a generous acquisitive prize of 40 guineas (A$3,484.70 value in 2020) for "the best oil or watercolour painting submitted, the works to be judged by Sir John Longstaff".