The basis of the museum was: part of the own collection of Stepan Leontiiovych Drozdov, organiser and first director of the museum, Karl Vasylovych Bolsunovskyi, member of the All-Russian Society of Archaeologists and official of the Skvyra zemstvo, and Petro Maksymovych Dzbanovskyi, a priest from the village of Tarashcha. Being outstanding specialists in archaeology, numismatics and ethnography, they gave the newly created museum part of the items from their private collections. The museum’s exhibition opened at the beginning of April 1925. In the same year, on 26 October, the museum’s new name was approved: Bila Tserkva District Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum. In May 1926 the former priest’s house on Castle Hill was transferred to the museum.

In the 1930s significant cultural valuables were confiscated from the museum’s collections. On the eve of the Second World War the collections had about 10 thousand exhibits, and the scientific library had 7 thousand books.

During the occupation of the city of Bila Tserkva by the German invaders the museum was not evacuated. During hostilities the museum collection was significantly looted.

After the liberation of the city from the occupiers, from the second half of 1944, a new exhibition was opened in the museum and the collections began to be replenished.

In 1976 construction of a new building for the museum of local lore began, and on 7 October 1983 a new exhibition opened.

Today the museum has 22 exhibition halls, a conference hall for 80 and a cinema hall for 100 seats. The exhibition, unique in its structure, is based on materials collected in the districts of southern Kyiv region and is presented in the sections of nature, archaeology, history and ethnography. The collections number over 96 thousand items. The museum keeps rich archaeological, ethnographic and numismatic collections. A collection of written and photographic documents is widely represented, among them early printed books of the 16th-19th centuries. There is a rich collection of items from the Cossack era. The art collection has valuable paintings of the 17th-19th centuries and works of contemporary artists of our city.

The Bila Tserkva Museum of Local Lore is a powerful scientific and methodological centre of the Right-Bank Kyiv region, a centre of culture and local lore. The museum hosts local history readings and scientific and practical conferences of various levels dedicated to significant events of history and the present, and their proceedings are published. Creative meetings, thematic evenings, art exhibitions, and exhibitions of decorative and applied art and master classes are traditional at the museum.

Since 1996 the Bila Tserkva Museum of Local Lore has published a popular-science historical annual, the “Yuriivskyi Litopys” (Yuriiv Chronicle).

The Bila Tserkva Museum of Local Lore is the only museum in Ukraine that has its own flag and coat of arms, created in 2004 for the museum’s 80th anniversary.