This is the best art collection in the country, with Kazakh, Russian and some Western European art and a room of top-class modern Kazakh handicrafts, with much explanatory material in English. Particularly interesting is the room on Russia's Mir Iskusstva movement, and also the large collection of paintings by Kazakh Abylkhan Kasteev (1904–73).
Kasteev’s clear portraits, landscapes and scenes of Soviet progress (railways, collective farming) obviously toed the party line but his technique is fabulous.
There's an engaging collection of abstract sculpture in the museum grounds.