[4] During the Stalinist era (1927–1953), three Soviet architects, Abdulov, Nikiforov, and Rosenblum designed the new building in the form of a huge cube, with all sides separated into even metal squares, lined with aluminum sheets on the outside.

The upper part is glazed with chrom-brugnatellite, smoothing the sunlight and setting indoor matte illumination.

Some works were transferred from museum collections in Moscow and Leningrad—for example, in 1920–1924 the museum received 116 works of Ukrainian and Russian artists from the 18th to 20th centuries, among them portraits by Vladimir Borovikovsky, Karl Bryullov, Ilya Repin, Vasily Tropinin, Nikolai Yaroshenko, and many others.

The museum also purchased about 250 paintings of pre-revolutionary Russian and non-Russian artists who were active in Central Asia: Igor Kazakov, Nikolay Karazin, and William Sommer.

[8] The museum's chief curator, Mirfayz Usmonov, was caught in 2014 selling artworks in the black market for the past 15 years and replacing them with copies.