President Kim Il Sung personally set the site for the gallery on the bank of the picturesque Taedong River and saw to it that it was built as a monumental edifice. On his initiative and under his energetic guidance the gallery was opened on August 14, Juche 50 (1961).

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Kim Il Sung's on-the-spot guidance to the gallery which falls on Tuesday.

He visited it to give important instructions which would serve as guidelines ranging from collection, expertising and studying of national art heritages, the proper inheritance of the time-honored tradition of the Korean painting and the use of art pieces for mass education to the principled demand to be met in selecting the themes of art pieces and displaying them.

With his energetic ideological and theoretical activities and wise guidance leader Kim Jong Il made sure that a fresh turn was brought about in the field of fine art.

The remodeled gallery exhibits many Korean paintings, acryl paintings, craftworks, embroideries and other art pieces in scores of rooms, with all conditions necessary for technical preservation, academic study, restoration and dissemination of fine art pieces.

More than ten exhibition rooms on the second floor showcase in a chronological order some excellent fine art pieces created by the resourceful Korean nation from the period of Koguryo dynasty to modern ages.

Exhibition rooms from the second to fourth floors have precious fine art pieces created in the historic annals of the country from the period of the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle.