The museum was founded in the Dorobanți neighbourhood in 1947, closed by the Nicolae Ceaușescu regime in 1977, and re-opened in 1992.
At the time the museum was founded, the act of donation stated that it must be housed in Zambaccian's former home.
Artists in the collection include Romanians Ion Andreescu, Corneliu Baba, Apcar Baltazar, Henri Catargi, Alexandru Ciucurencu, Horia Damian, Nicolae Dărăscu, Lucian Grigorescu, Nicolae Grigorescu, Iosif Iser, Ștefan Luchian, Samuel Mützner [ro], Alexandru Padina [ro], Theodor Pallady, Gheorghe Petrașcu, Vasile Popescu, Camil Ressu, and Nicolae Tonitza, and French artists Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne—the museum has the only Cézanne in Romania—, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Eugène Delacroix, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Albert Marquet, Henri Matisse, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Maurice Utrillo, as well as pieces by two other artists who worked in France, the Spaniard Pablo Picasso and the Englishman Alfred Sisley.
The courtyard features a large sculpture by Romanian sculptor Oscar Han; other sculptors with works in the collection are Constantin Brâncuși, Cornel Medrea, Milița Petrașcu, Dimitrie Paciurea, and Frederic Storck.
Storck's own former home, also in the north end of Bucharest, is also now a museum.